Sensual and subversive, daring Rattle leaves Barbican buzzing
LSO/Rattle
Barbican, EC2
★★★★★
ANY audience members nervous that the first half of this LSO concert was devoted to the atonality of the Second Viennese School were quickly reassured by a warm bath of neo-Wagnerian harmonies.
The sound-world of Alban Berg’s Seven Early Songs is in fact a familiar one, with touches of Strauss and Debussy overlaying the Wagner and in Sir Simon Rattle’s hands the sensuality was irresistible. Dorothea Röschmann delivered the solo soprano part with suitably rapturous attention to the ripely Romantic texts.
We then moved on a few years for the more complex polyphony of the 1913 Passacaglia, played in an unbroken sequence with the Three Pieces for Orchestra of 1913-15. With its richly contrapuntal textures, macabre march music and terrifying hammerblows, this sounded like Mahler on mescaline. But Rattle, as ever, imposed sovereign authority on it all.
The LSO forces were reduced to classical proportions for Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, ensuring a lithe, muscular projection of the fast movements. Emphasising the viola/ cello countermelody in the Allegretto was daring, even subversive, of Rattle, but it made sense as a way of building up the layering of textures.
The Allegro finale hurtled by in a whirl, executed with formidable precision, Rattle channelling the exuberance into an explosive conclusion that drew whoops of joy from the audience. Afterwards the auditorium was positively buzzing — and the Beethoven anniversary is barely underway.