Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet is one of a handful of works that is played so often that it struggles to retain its freshness. Although an overture by name, in both scale and semi-narrative design, it is more than halfway to being a tone-poem, and so playing it simply as a sumptuous opening work never does it justice. What Roberto Abbado did was to maximise the dramatic potential of its opposing characters: the opening chorale sounded not meditative but intransigent, suggesting itself as the binding, controlling force behind dramatic events. Played like this rather than as a feel-good opening work, Romeo and Juliet came vividly to life.
A conductor's beat does not come much clearer than Abbado's: his style is crisp and economical rather than flamboyantly expressive. It was not clear, therefore, why the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic strings seemed to be having such an off-night, with several untidy entries and scrappy passages. There was a particular low point when the double-basses continued to retune for some time after Abbado had returned to the podium, forcing him to wait before beginning the next work.
Although Stravinsky's Apollon Musagète masquerades as the epitome of classical restraint, even otherworldly purity, its alter ego is unmistakably the fashionable world of 1920s Paris, most obviously in the jaunty two-step of the coda. The Philharmonic strings responded sensitively to Abbado here, capturing all shades and moods from the whimsical Polyhymnia variation to the poised ecstacy of the Apotheosis.
Prokofiev's mighty wartime Fifth Symphony makes a stark contrast: Stravinsky's former Parisian rival now a reconstructed Soviet composer. But the old insouciance is still there, albeit with a menacing tinge.
Abbado brought this out especially well, partly through imitating the old Soviet orchestral sound, with a driven, steely quality to the RLPO strings and wind. That was particularly effective in the second and last movements, where Abbado screwed the tension between playfulness and sadism almost to breaking-point.
· Further performance tonight. Box office: 0151-709 3789.
