Rattle brings a cosmic stillness to the LSO

The closing concert of the London Symphony Orchestra’s season began with Charles Ives’s brief The Unanswered

Question. Programmed a long time ago with the music director designate, Sir Simon Rattle, the title now feels rather pert, in light of last week’s Brexit vote. Whatever questions the American Transcendentalist-influenced Ives may have been grappling with when he composed the piece in 1908, it was hard not to be reminded of the question marks now hanging over the Barbican and LSO. After Brexit, what are the chances of the City funding the new concert hall promised to Rattle? Indeed, will Rattle still want to work here?

Let’s hope so. This concert was a reminder of

the difference Rattle has already made by his regular presence this season, even though he does not take up the job officially until September 2017. The quality of the LSO’s sound has been transformed, a change evident in the cosmic stillness of The Unanswered Question.

From here the musicians moved seamlessly into Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto. Famously fastidious, the Polish virtuoso Krystian Zimerman travels with his own piano and re-voices it according to the repertoire. Here, it sounded like a period piano, brittle at the top and still full of colour, even without the percussive excesses of modern instruments.

In the brief middle movement, the orchestra was initially forceful, then acquiesced to Zimerman’s warmly lyrical playing. Rattle entered with high spirits into the humour of the romping finale.

In theory, that was quite enough for one evening, and to follow it with Rachmaninov’s bloated Second Symphony should have been a let down. But Rattle’s forward momentum made this a refreshingly unindulgent performance.