Valery Gergiev chose Stravinsky's 1948 Mass setting to fire the starting gun for his week-long Stravinsky festival. An interesting choice for portraying variegations in the composer's diverse stylistic spectrum, the Mass isn't really a concert piece, and is anticlimactic when performed as such. Its main source of interest is the range of textures achieved with the very particular mixture of double-reed instruments and brass, which lends an exhilarating shrillness to this otherwise rather humdrum liturgical setting. The massed ranks of the London Symphony Chorus are, of course, an impressive sound and sight in their own right, and the young soloists (Maud Millar, Chloë Treharne, Alessandro Fisher, Sandy Martin and Oskar Palmblad) were all most impressive, projecting well while still blending with the ensemble.
The violin concerto followed, a work that presses chattering, effervescent jollity into service from the get-go. It was a welcome change of gear. Gergiev and his orchestra attuned beautifully to the smooth, smoky timbre and relaxed, almost debonair manner of the soloist, Leonidas Kavakos. Some might wish for a more gutsy interpretation, but to my mind the cool and lightly worn brilliance of Kavakos suits the work better.
The second half was taken up with the Firebird, performed complete. Just as Stravinsky used the ballet as a kind of shop window to display his extraordinary talents, so too – despite its longeurs – does the piece now offer a wonderful showcase for the orchestra performing it. Guided unfailingly by the mysterious flickering of their maestro's fingers, the LSO were on cracking form. By turns disciplined, crisp, gutsy and garish, they did perfect justice to the work's unfurling of extraordinary textures and novel rhythmic processes – suggesting, if nothing else, that great things may come in the week ahead.
