AN ALPINE SYMPHONY
Royal Festival Hall
★★★★
“An Alpine Symphony is a sonic spectacular”
The London Philharmonic Orchestra were in fine form for this evening’s An Alpine Symphony.
The evening opened with the European premiere of Pasajes (Passages – 2022), composed by LPO Composer-in-Residence Tania León. The composer describes the 14-minute piece as “flashes in my memory”. A musical experience of León’s Cuban childhood memories and sounds including birdsong and the rhythm of the Carnaval. Instead of conga drums, here the kettle drums pick up the Latin American beat. The orchestra felt underused with the eight double-basses mostly plucking on one note.
Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor, Op.16 (1870) is the only concerto he completed, but it is still one of the freshest-sounding and heroically emotional piano concertos of the Romantic era. In a last-minute change of artist, tonight it was played by one of Britain’s most treasured musicians, the pianist Steven Osborne OBE, who replaced the remarkable 18-year-old Alexandra Dovgan who suddenly “had to withdraw from this concert due to visa difficulties”.
The Concerto is in three movements and opens with one of concert music’s most famous and dramatic openings, which is always breathtaking. The lyrical Adagio unfolds with just strings playing the ravishing main theme and unfolds with a deeply touching expressivity before plunging into the thrilling last movement with its beautiful flute solo (Juliette Bausor), lovely duet with piano and first cello (Kristina Blaumane) and its vigorous Norwegian folk tunes.
Osborne’s performance had him bouncing off his seat and with his staccato hands it was technically brilliant but, one felt that he missed the ambiguity of Grieg’s melodic contours, and in bringing out the emotions of yearning and melancholy as well as the joy and vitality – Grieg is never straightforward. At full throttle, the large orchestra slightly drowned out the piano, but you certainly felt all their emotion. In complete contrast to the Concerto, Osborne played a short encore with a gentle blues interpretation of Danny Boy.
After the interval the full London Philharmonic Orchestra, 120 stunning musicians under the baton of Principal Conductor Edward Gardner put their heart and soul into playing An Alpine Symphony, Op. 64 (1915) by Richard Strauss. The piece plays straight through, and you can literally visualise the journey up a snowy mountain from night to the sunrise, with the ascent up through the woods, past mountain pastures and waterfalls, wrong turns through thickets, going higher on to the glacier and up to the summit. Then comes the calm before the storm, then the thunder and tempest, to the descent as the sun is setting to night again. It is a massive play, and Strauss literally throws everything at this majestic piece. The French horn fanfares tonight came from an open doorway halfway to the back of the auditorium, then with a quick sprint backstage they joined the orchestra on stage. The whole orchestra is kept busy throughout; particularly the full timpani and percussion team who get to play everything from cowbells in the meadows to the incredible climactic storm atop of the mountain with wind machines, thunder sheets and symbols. The strings take up the rain and drip, drip, as the storm abates. Until then, the organ had been used more to prolong the notes of other instruments but came into its own strength towards the end as the descent begins before being joined by the deep and rich sounds of the brass section as the sun sets to night again.
I did not find the organ a comfortable instrument to listen to being played with a full orchestra. Sorry. It has such a different tone to the other instruments. But to have 120 of your band mates down below you on the stage and you hidden in between the crowded audience in the choir seats of the Royal Festival Hall, must truly be the loneliest gig in the world. Only able to see your fellow musicians and his conductor through his rear-view mirror, as his back is to them and the audience, facing a wall of organ pipes.
I loved the piece as a visual treat visualising twenty-four hours in the life of a mountain. However, it appears that Strauss might have had a different character for his symphony, drawing on the Neitzschean philosophy, writing in his diary in 1911 that he wanted “to call my Alpine Symphony, The Antichrist.” So maybe that is the answer as to why he put an organ in his symphony….
An Alpine Symphony is a sonic spectacular and the orchestra bowed to the front of the auditorium and turned and bowed low to the audience in the choir seats behind them – but I like to think they were bowing to their lonely fellow musician up top on the organ.
World class playing by the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
AN ALPINE SYMPHONY
Royal Festival Hall
Reviewed on 21st February 2025
by Debbie Rich
Photography by Mark Allan (header image of Edward Gardner) and Ben Ealovega (image of Steven Osborne)
Previously reviewed at Southbank venues:
THE EMPLOYEES | ★★★★★ | January 2025
THE CREAKERS | ★★★★ | December 2024
DUCK POND | ★★★★ | December 2024
KARINA CANELLAKIS CONDUCTS SCHUMANN & BRUCKNER | ★★★★ | October 2024
JOYCE DIDONATO SINGS BERLIOZ | ★★★★ | September 2024
MARGARET LENG TAN: DRAGON LADIES DON’T WEEP | ★★★★ | May 2024
MASTERCLASS | ★★★★ | May 2024
FROM ENGLAND WITH LOVE | ★★★½ | April 2024
REUBEN KAYE: THE BUTCH IS BACK | ★★★★ | December 2023
THE PARADIS FILES | ★★★★ | April 2022
