The final concert in Vladimir Jurowski’s Stravinsky series with the London Philharmonic began with Variations (Aldous Huxley in Memoriam) and Threni, both dating from the end of Stravinsky’s career after he had adopted an astringent serial technique derived from Schoenbergian methodology. Variations, ringing aphoristic changes on a single note row, was Stravinsky’s last completed orchestral score. Written in 1958, Threni, for soloists, chorus and orchestra, is a setting of sections from the Lamentations of Jeremiah that both looks back to the rituals of Oedipus Rex and Symphony of Psalms and aspires to the timeless simplicity of plainchant.
Infrequently played, both works have a reputation for uncompromising austerity, though Jurowski’s performances reminded us of the severe beauty that offsets the rigour. Variations could have been tauter but the textures were clean and sensuous, the playing scrupulous and poised. Threni was altogether more sharply focussed. The London Philharmonic Choir were divided into two groups positioned either side of the orchestra so that the antiphonal pattern of verses and responses was carefully and clearly established. Among the soloists, tenor Sam Furness and bass Joshua Bloom stood out in their long, unaccompanied exchange at the work’s centre. Jurowski was keenly alert to the brief moments of orchestral numinousness that suggest the immanence of divine illumination amid the darkness. This was a performance of great profundity and spiritual depth.
After the interval came Berio’s Sinfonia, for which the LPO was joined by the Swingles, heirs to the original Swingle Singers for whom the work was written. Berio’s existentially defiant, postmodern take on symphonic music past and present, urging us to “keep going” as civilisation collapses around us, has lost none of its force over time, and this was a performance of great passion and elan, superbly played and sung. The threnody for Martin Luther King that forms its second movement had a haunting intensity, and the huge central scherzo, which swamps the third movement of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony in a barrage of musical quotes and verbiage, was as unnerving as it was witty.
Terrific stuff, wonderfully well done.
