United Kingdom Tchaikovsky, Vaughan Williams: Antoine Tamestit (viola), Julia Sitkovetsky (soprano), Ashley Riches (bass-baritone), London Symphony Refrain (refrain director: Mariana Rosas) and London Symphony Orchestra / Sir Antonio Pappano (conductor). Barbican Corridor, London, 7.12.2025. (KMcD)
Tchaikovsky – Symphony No.4
Vaughan Williams – Flos Campi for Viola & Refrain; Dona nobis pacem
Sir Antonio Pappano returned to the London Symphony Orchestra within the Barbican Corridor with a programme that positioned Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony earlier than the interval, adopted by two works by Vaughan Williams that might hardly be extra completely different in character: the elusive inwardness of Flos Campi and the uncooked public protest of Dona nobis pacem. With Antoine Tamestit as viola soloist and the London Symphony Refrain joined by soprano Julia Sitkovetsky and baritone Ashley Riches, the night was formed as a journey from private destiny to collective conscience.
Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony made a direct and emphatic opening assertion. The infamous brass fanfare, the embodiment of what the composer described because the inescapable drive of destiny, was delivered with searing precision and granite authority, the LSO’s brass on formidable kind from the outset. Pappano set out his stall instantly with a studying that favoured rigidity over rhetorical show. There was little indulgence in sweeping gesture; as an alternative, the argument was pushed ahead with agency grip and an unsentimental edge.
The primary motion’s lengthy span held collectively convincingly, its moments of lyrical launch by no means allowed to dissipate the underlying unease. The Andantino unfolded with a quieter, extra reflective air, the woodwind principals shaping their solos with pure, unforced eloquence. Pappano resisted the temptation to lean too closely on the motion’s melancholy, maintaining the road pliant and flowing. The Scherzo, with its famously athletic pizzicato writing, was dispatched with readability and sparkle, the interaction between strings, winds and brass finely judged. Within the finale, Pappano unleashed the music’s kinetic vitality with managed exuberance, your entire orchestra – and as soon as once more the brass specifically – sounding each fearless and scrupulously safe, the triumph on the shut carrying simply sufficient shadow to keep away from sounding merely celebratory.
After the interval, the change of environment was instant. Vaughan Williams’s Flos Campi, impressed by the Music of Songs and scored for viola, small orchestra and wordless refrain, stays a peculiarly arduous work to position. Neither concerto nor cantata, it unfolds as a sequence of temporary, inward meditations. Pappano approached it as a steady circulate fairly than a set of disconnected panels, permitting its modal harmonies and shifting textures to talk with quiet assurance.
Antoine Tamestit proved a compelling presence on the centre of the work. His taking part in mixed heat of tone with a centered, inward depth, the viola line unfolding with a vocal high quality that felt solely pure on this context. The London Symphony Refrain, built-in discreetly into the general sound, sang with refined mix and spectacular restraint, their sound hovering across the instrumental texture fairly than projecting outward. The outcome was a efficiency that favoured environment over overt assertion, permitting the work’s enigmatic character to stay intact.
The place Flos Campi turns inward, Dona nobis pacem addresses the world head-on. Written in 1936, as conflict as soon as once more loomed over Europe, it stays considered one of Vaughan Williams’s most uncompromising responses to human battle. The preliminary plea for peace was sober fairly than overtly emotive, although Sitkovetsky’s uncovered opening entry carried an fringe of pressure and unsettled intonation that momentarily jarred in opposition to the stillness of the choral writing. That restraint solely heightened the shock of the central sections, the place the orchestra dug sharply into the rhythmic writing and the brass tore by means of the feel with uncooked drive.
Riches introduced weight and readability to the baritone solos, his supply agency however by no means hectoring, shaping Walt Whitman’s strains with centered authority. Sitkovetsky, as soon as previous her uneasy opening, settled into the rating with larger safety, her brighter tone chopping cleanly by means of the choral material. The refrain, beneath their director Mariana Rosas, excelled within the lengthy, uncovered strains of the Whitman settings, combining readability of diction with sustained depth and spectacular management throughout the work’s broad dynamic vary.
Pappano sustained the lengthy arc of Dona nobis pacem with unerring command. The return to the opening plea for peace on the shut of the work didn’t supply simple consolation. As a substitute, it felt worn, hard-won and painfully unresolved, the silence that adopted charged with which means.
Throughout the night, the programming proved greater than a easy sequence of orchestral showpieces. Tchaikovsky’s wrestle with destiny, Vaughan Williams’s inward mysticism and his public outcry in opposition to conflict fashioned a coherent emotional trajectory. The LSO performed all through with authority and refinement, with each part contributing on the highest stage, whereas the London Symphony Refrain, beneath Rosas’s course, introduced each precision and weight to the second half.
On the centre of all of it was Pappano, conducting with a stability of urgency and restraint that allowed every work to talk in its personal voice whereas nonetheless contributing to a bigger narrative. It was a night that demonstrated how thoughtfully formed programming, allied to high-calibre efficiency, can resonate for a very long time after the ultimate notes have pale.
Keith McDonnell
Featured Picture: Violist Antoine Tamestit and London Symphony Refrain and Orchestra performed by Sir Antonio Pappano © Mark Allan
