Knussen
Flourish with Fireworks, Op.22
Rachmaninov
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op.43
Shostakovich
Symphony No.11 in G minor, Op. 103 ‘The Year 1905’
Kirill Gerstein (Piano)
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Thomas Søndergård
Reviewed by: Chris Caspell
Reviewed: 3 August, 2026
Venue: Royal Albert Hall, London
If there was a theme to the first half of tonight’s Prom, it was patience: both of the pieces before the interval needed a little time to find their feet. Fortunately, once they did, the rewards were considerable — and the second half needed no such warming up at all.
Knussen’s Flourish with Fireworks opened proceedings, written originally as a four-minute celebratory curtain-raiser for Michael Tilson Thomas’s first season as Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. It felt a touch laboured in its opening bars, but the RSNO soon found its stride, and what followed was a compact whirlwind that showcased the orchestra’s technical mastery in miniature.
That same sense of needing to settle carried into Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. At the outset there was a clear disconnect between soloist and ensemble: Kirill Gerstein, technically imposing as ever, initially seemed inclined to go his own way with scant regard for the players around him. As with the Knussen, though, matters soon resolved themselves once eye contact was re-established between soloist and conductor, and the performance grew steadily in cohesion.
The famous eighteenth variation did not disappoint, soloist, conductor and orchestra keeping the music moving rather than lingering in overt romanticism — a reading that favoured shape over swoon. The finale, from Variation 19 to the close, was where the performance truly came together, presenting the ensemble as one; the playing here from all parties was excellent. If one were being finicky, the closing notes might have been dispatched with a touch more cheek.
Gerstein’s encore was a quietly considered choice: rather than reach for the ever-popular second of Rachmaninov’s Morceaux de fantaisie, he offered the third — the Mélodie in E major, an early, reflective miniature of real beauty. The inner voices were exquisitely brought to the fore, a lovely piece of pianism to send the audience into the interval.
After the break, Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11 in G minor, ‘The Year 1905’, needed no time at all to get going — the tension was immediate and never let up. One of the composer’s more straightforward symphonies in narrative terms, it depicts the Bloody Sunday massacre of January 1905, when Tsarist troops fired on peaceful protesters attempting to deliver a petition to the Tsar. Played, as it must be, across all four movements without a break, the work unfolded as a single dramatic arc.
The opening Adagio, depicting the stillness of Palace Square in St Petersburg on the morning of 9th January, was quite magical: a hushed string opening punctuated by four harps, over which Søndergård maintained an eerie, sustained tension ahead of the chattering brass outbursts. The brass and wind sections were on excellent form throughout.
The second movement, an agitated and exciting Allegro depicting the events of Bloody Sunday itself at the Winter Palace, was the highlight of the evening’s playing — the percussion section excelled, with particular credit to timpanist Louise Goodwin. This is the symphony’s most cinematic stretch, and it’s easy to hear why it found its way into commercial releases of Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin.
The lamenting third movement opens with an extended funeral march built on the revolutionary song ‘You Fell as Victims’, anchored by an extensive viola solo, beautifully sustained throughout. The finale — a call to arms — brought tolling church bells sounding the alarm, the closing bars driving triumphantly and resolutely toward the promise of the coming revolution.
A first half that asked for a little indulgence, then, but a second half — and an evening overall — that amply repaid it.