“London Philharmonic Orchestra, live in your living room,” the advert in the programme declared, promoting the orchestra’s latest archive release on CD. With a temporary home in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the outfit’s London concerts have been miniaturised too. Small-scale works, small-scale experiences: not a good combination.
But Mark Elder’s concert proved that the petite orchestral concert, if conceived and executed well, can still generate major delight. For Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks concerto just 15 players occupied the stage, and they obviously relished their intimacy. If sloppily played, Stravinsky’s neo-classical delight can seem dry as whitened bones; but this was played con amore, with punchy rhythms, lively inflections and the constant sense of an intelligent guiding hand. The concert’s opening Mozart symphony, No 34, shared some of the same rhythmic brio, though never quite the joyful purpose or suavity of tone.
This music in a classical cut came cleverly partnered with the romantic. The pocket-sized romantic. Wagner’s Wesendonk songs were heard in Hans Werner Henze’s airy chamber version of 1976 Far from petite in height, the Swedish contralto Anna Larsson swept on to the platform in the kind of red dress not recommended to anyone playing hide and seek. But there was nothing shrieking or stentorian about her singing as she poured her dark liquid voice over the slender words of Mathilde Wesendonk.
For all Larsson’s firm control and tones of quiet rapture, the performance’s magic was mostly coloured by Henze’s orchestration and the fine LPO instrumentalists. Im Treibhaus was particularly ravishing.
After Stravinsky’s neo-classicism, what else but Strauss’s post-romanticism? Following the lead of all swinging chamber orchestras, the 23 LPO string players played Strauss’s Metamorphosen mostly standing up, violins to the left, violas to the right, cellos and double-basses perched in the middle. No chance for relaxation here: Strauss’s sombre lament, written among the rubble of 1945, was projected with extra commitment and ardour.