Jansen, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Nézet-Séguin, Royal Festival Hall

JANSEN, LPO, NÉZET-SÉGUIN: Prokofiev season concludes with a welcome return to the symphonic mainstream

Prokofiev season concludes with a welcome return to the symphonic mainstream

At last, a bag of sweets! In earlier concerts from Vladimir Jurowski’s LPO series Prokofiev: Man of the People? much time was spent  consuming the composer’s flat soufflés, experimental rock cakes, or the fancy dish that was really haddock. Interesting for the brain, maybe, but the diet on occasion has been hard on the stomach. Not that any of this impinged on audience numbers: the season has definitely proved Jurowski’s happy lock on the London Philharmonic’s audiences. They will follow their artistic guru and Principal Conductor almost anywhere.

Fleisher, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Jurowski, Royal Festival Hall

Prokofiev festival finds showmanship if not soul in the composer's ballet music

The London Philharmonic’s current festival – Prokofiev: Man of the People? – is all about the question mark. While the festival’s concerts, lectures and even its classical club-night each make their own statement, the overarching spirit here is one of exploration, of questioning. Jurowski and his orchestra are peeling back the composer’s grinning modernist mask and attempting to expose the human face (or possibly faces) behind it.

Classical CDs Weekly: Honegger, Paul Hillier, Libera

Seasonal discs include a rarely heard gem from a Swiss composer and two very different carol collections

 

Honegger: Une cantate de Noël, Pastorale d’été, Symphony No 4 London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, New London Childrens’ Choir/Jurowski (LPO)

Jansen, London Philharmonic, Vänskä, Royal Festival Hall

OSMO VÄNSKÄ & LONDON PHILHARMONIC: Polished but chilly Bruckner Four and a white-hot concerto

Polished but chilly Bruckner Four and a white-hot concerto

Noticed that nip in the air recently? The reason now is obvious: conductor Osmo Vänskä, the brisk wind from Minnesota, has blown into town, challenging London’s orchestral musicians to give beyond their best and uncover new layers in repertory works they previously assumed they knew backwards. Last year, the London Philharmonic sweated blood with the Minnesota Orchestra’s rigorous conductor over Sibelius’s symphonies; last night, in a one-off, orchestra and conductor faced up to Bruckner and his Fourth Symphony, the Romantic

Leiferkus, LPO, Jurowski, Royal Festival Hall

 

 

A voyage around Musorgsky: from the raw original to more recent composers' homages

How odd that Musorgsky, a composer sanctified beyond his very individual deserts for making social statements in his art, should be feted by an orchestra, or rather an orchestral management, which says music and politics don't mix.

BBC Proms: Bavouzet, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Jurowski

The Albert Hall gets Hungarian, with a hot gypsy band and a steel-fingered pianist

The world tour that the Proms offer this year touches down in no more fascinating musical country than Hungary, with three of its great composers, Liszt, Bartók and Kodály brought into the Albert Hall last night by the ever-stimulating Vladimir Jurowski with his hot gypsy band, the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Classical CDs Weekly: Mahler, Schubert, Stravinsky

Thomas Zehetmair lays down his fiddle to conduct kindred spirits Schubert and Gál

With Gál and Poulenc thrown in: this week it's all about kindred spirits

A 20th-century Austrian symphony receives a memorable first recording, coupled with a witty, rarely played slice of Schubert. Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony is heard in a powerful reading recorded in the Royal Festival Hall. And we’ve an intelligent, logical coupling of two ballets commissioned by Diaghilev.

L'elisir d'amore, Glyndebourne Festival Opera

Poor production rescued by a superlative cast

Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore must be the only opera from whose central lesson one can actually learn something. Its message - drink, chill out, back off and the girl will be yours - is as good a moral guide to life as any. But it was still surprising to leave Glyndebourne last night satisfied.

Another Brit conductor makes lightning progress

Nicholas Collon, already winning his laurels

Anyone who's attended an Aurora Orchestra concert at Kings Place will know that twentysomething conductor Nicholas Collon - oddly, the birth date seems elusive - is a force to be reckoned with. When he speaks, he looks as if butter wouldn't melt, but in action his technique is disciplined as well as sufficiently free to get the flexibility he needs. So the London Philharmonic Orchestra has made an excellent choice in appointing him as assistant conductor to Vladimir Jurowski from the beginning of the 2011-12 season.