South Florida Classical Review

Sir Antonio Pappano led the London Symphony Orchestra in music of Elgar, Bernstein and Walker Sunday night at the Arsht Center in Miami.

After an absence of several decades, the London Symphony Orchestra made a welcome return to Miami on Sunday night, a marquee attraction on the Arsht Center’s classical series. 

Sir Antonio Pappano, in his second season as the storied ensemble’s chief conductor, was on the podium. Unlike many touring orchestras that program the most obvious symphonic warhorses, the enterprising Pappano devoted half of his program to two infrequently heard works by American composers and a British classic. The enthusiastic audience response proved that adventurous programming need not be avoided in South Florida.

Throughout the evening, the Londoners’ reputation as a stellar orchestra was fully confirmed. This is a group that makes a big, full sound. Strings project in rich, dark tonal luster and brass have solidity and heft. The winds are especially distinguished, ad their light, sweetened allure balances well with the larger forces. Long renowned for his decades of work in opera, Pappano brings that experience to the symphonic podium with a patrician sense of balancing, elasticity and musical proportion.

Pappano opened the program with Sinfonia No. 5 (Visions) by George Walker (1922-2018). Written in 2016 by the then 94-year-old composer, the work was conceived in response to the massacre of black churchgoers by a white supremacist in Charleston, South Carolina. Walker’s opus is scored for massive forces, the enlarged percussion section including glockenspiel and vibraphone. 

The opening chords register shock with the orchestra in full throttle. There are some contrasting moments of calm in the 18-minute score but pounding discordance abounds throughout its duration. The diminuendo ending more effectively evokes the tragedy than any other moment in the piece.  

Anger is as valid a subject for musical discourse as any other emotion, but Walker’s consistently dissonant, busy creation ultimately fails to make a cogent argument. Still, Pappano clearly believes in this work and he led an intense, compelling performance. The orchestra’s corporate dynamism held the listener’s attention despite Walker’s largely ceaseless bombast.

Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade (After Plato’s Symposium) for violin, strings, harp and percussion is one of those works that is easier to admire than like. The piece comes from Bernstein’s most fertile creative period of the early 1940’s to the late 1950’s. Those years saw the creation of two symphonies, the ballet Fancy Free, the opera Trouble in Tahiti, the operetta Candide and the Broadway musicals On the Town, Wonderful Town and West Side Story. 

The Serenade is not on the same level as any of those scores. To be sure, Bernstein’s trademark lyric and jazz influences are everywhere present. At times, it seems that sections of the five movements are rejected drafts for West Side Story, the Jets and the Sharks just waiting to emerge from the wings. The work’s best moments come in the fourth movement with an expansive lyrical outpouring worthy of Samuel Barber at his zenith.

Bernstein’s work is a bravura minefield, requiring a soloist with consummate artistry and tremendous technique. Dutch violinist Janine Jansen was more than equal to the task. Well known in Europe as a chamber music player as well as soloist, Jansen’s American appearances have been too rare in recent years. 

She commands a tonal palette that soars and sings while infusing every bar with tension and distinct personality. Her intonation remained clean and lines transparent, even in the double stops and passages in the instrument’s highest register.  Jansen’s ability to play softly with liberal portamento brought out the work’s strengths while minimizing its overheated theatricality. Pappano was a consummate collaborator , drawing precision and deft articulation from the string contingent while never overpowering Jansen. The violinist and conductor shared in the standing ovation.

Elgar’s Enigma Variations is a masterpiece of the orchestral literature that too often emerges as an episodic jumble in performance. Not with Pappano and the Londoners. This music is baked into the group’s DNA and their reading captured the contrasting moods of Elgar’s miniature portraits of his wife and friends. Pappano took the mysterious main theme at a spacious tempo, abetted by vibrant string sonority. Climaxes were organically built, rapid figures had bite and raucous moments were never out of control. 

“Nimrod” was the performance’s appropriate high point. Pappano kept a flowing pulse while integrating strings and winds to an aural glow. His tempo for the Allegro finale (self-portrait of the compose) emerged fast, energetic and confident. Balances were so perfect that one could hear the strings clearly, even over brass and percussion at top volume. The entire performance evidenced a mastery, in the best sense of the term, from both conductor and musicians.

At the last chord, the entire audience rose to its feet. After repeated curtain calls, Pappano offered a populist encore – Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 1, seasoned with spicy paprika.

Lahav Shani conducts the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in Tzvi Avni’s Prayer, Bruch’s Kol Nidrei, Bernstein’s Halil and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 (Pathetique)  8 p.m. March 19 at the Arsht Center in Miami. arshtcenter.org

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