The Devil’s instruments, mobile phones. There we were, sorrowfully basking in the dying sighs of Tchaikovsky’s Path?tique symphony when that pesky trilling wafted out from the auditorium. Beside that sonic carbuncle, the violinist Christian Tetzlaff’s dash to repair a bust string after a bar and a half of Brahms’s concerto seemed no disruption at all.
You see, it was an eventful night. And a long one. Some chief conductors would be happy to let two fat 19th-century warhorses preen in the programme by themselves. Not Vladimir Jurowski: the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s firebrand also slipped in two contemporary works for strings. Most enjoyable by far was Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Lullaby for Hans, a reflective seven minutes from 2006 in honour of Hans Werner Henze’s 80th birthday. As lyric phrases slowly percolated in an atmosphere calm but alert, it was easy to imagine the two composers on Henze’s Italian terrace, musing and drinking into the dying light.
Restless mid-section apart, Henze’s own Second Sonata for strings, from 1995, was equally unruffled in tempo. But its lusher, more various textures - nicely displayed by the orchestra - didn’t stop the pleasure quotient plummeting. An unusually obdurate piece, it was like taking medicine.
But once Tetzlaff walked on, we immediately felt better. He’s a dependably excellent musician, always fusing brain and heart with racing fingers and a huge range of dynamics. The colour variations brought to the Brahms were remarkable. Songful stretches balanced tenderness with muscle; and there was no flash posturing about the finale’s gypsy fire. The orchestra’s chief contributions were beefiness and precision.
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Audacious, self-centred, soulful, masochistic - the Path?tique in Jurowski’s hands gave us the tears without the glycerine, made the waltz wink and the march glitter, and balanced the instrumental strands most carefully. The LPO strings scaled a new temperature in warmth, brass and winds never turned vulgar; all was splendid. Then the phone rang.
BBC Radio 3 broadcasts the concert tomorrow night.