Prom 17: Vasily Petrenko conducts Tchaikovsky

Charles Ives
Three Places in New England
Maurice Ravel
Piano Concerto in G major
Claude Debussy
Nocturnes
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Francesca da Rimini

Denis Kozhukhin (piano)

Philharmonia Chorus (upper voices)
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Vasily Petrenko

The excellence of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under their conductor Vasily Petrenko continues with each concert. Thursday’s Prom was a vivid and well-contrasted programme that showed off all departments of the orchestra, especially the woodwind, to good advantage and was a mixture of the familiar and unfamiliar that drew a full house. 

The less familiar was Charles Ives’ Three Places in New England programmed in commemoration of the 150^thanniversary of his birth and receiving only its seventh performance at the Proms. (Lorin Maazel’s 1975 performance with the Cleveland Orchestra still lingers in the memory.) The opening movement, The Saint Gaudens in Boston Common, is a memorial to America’s first black army company in the Civil War and is haunting and elegiac. It’s a slow march built on several tunes from plantation songs to Civil War songs and Petrenko drew out wispy strands of sound from the strings. It was very controlled and dreamlike without suggesting the discreet layers of sound within the music.  The second movement, Putnam’s Camp, Redding, Connecticut, with its two clashing brass bands on a 4^th July outing was rambunctious, leading to a massive orchestral pile-up at its dissonant coda.   

The Housatonic at Stockbridge memorialises Ives and his wife, Harmony, walking along the banks of the Housatonic River on their honeymoon. Petrenko and the RPO caught the nostalgic quality of the dignified slow-motion central theme perfectly.

Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major is much more familiar with Denis Kozhukhin as the soloist in a work that he has also recorded. Kozhukhin always brings great clarity and a sense of purpose to his performances. He seemed more meditative than usual in the first movement and emphasised the bluesy nature of the music, whilst Suzy Willison – Kawalec ‘s harp solo was a delight.   The second movement seemed a touch too slow and introspective rather than wistful, but the third movement burst into life with mercurial playing from both soloist and orchestra and Kozhukhin providing some dazzling finger work. Overall, there was the nagging feeling that a little more rehearsal, especially in the slow movement, would not have gone amiss.  Kozhukhin’s encore was Tchaikovsky’s “In Church” from Album for the Young (Opus 39) with its ending seemingly stretching out into infinity.

Debussy’s Nocturnes was next up after the interval. Petrenko kept the opening Nuages moving with some lovely woodwind solos, especially from Emer McDonaugh’s flute, and the cor anglais (Patrick Flanaghan) suggesting a hint of menace at an approaching storm. The following Fetes was bracing, vivid and tight rhythmically. The upper voices of the Philharmonia Chorus took a moment to settle in Sirénes but were fresh and precise in the movement’s changing harmonies and rhythms and the orchestra offered skeins of sound in accompaniment. Many of the promenaders seemed mesmerised by the Choir’s singing and the piece worked its magic in the hall.

If the Nocturnes were restrained, Petrenko’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini was music–making with the hand- brake off. In the wrong hands the work can seem a pot boiler, but Petrenko and the RPO offered a fervent and highly musical performance. The opening had baleful brass and swirling, dense, chromatic strings that summoned up a view into the pits of Hell. Petrenko keep the central section flowing for the love music for Francesca and Paolo with an especially poignant clarinet solo (Katherine Lacy) for Francesca herself. Petrenko, his left-hand flying, launched the final maelstrom with maniacal energy to cap a fine performance that mixed grace with ferocity in equal measure.