Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham, 27 October, 2023.

5*****: William Ruff

Someone should suggest to the producers of Strictly Come Dancing that there’s a perfect piece of classical music for their Halloween show: Baba Yaga by the Russian composer Anatoly Liadov, the first piece in Friday’s RPO concert. It’s more or less the right length (just 3 minutes) and it’s as spooky as it gets.

It’s all about an ugly old witch who lives in a hut which spins on chicken’s legs surrounded by a fence made of human bones. Her favourite food is little children and when she goes flying on her broomstick, the trees groan, the winds howl and disembodied hands reach out to do her evil bidding. It was a great concert opener for this time of the year and the RPO, under their conductor Vasily Petrenko tackled it with as much ghoulish relish as can be packed into 180 seconds.

Pavel Kolesnikov was the soloist in Tchaikovsky’s 1st Piano Concerto. It has one of the most famous concerto openings: a glorious, passionate, noble theme, accompanied by (normally) thunderous chords on the piano. Except in this performance those chords had a subtly different effect. Kolesnikov isn’t built for muscular hard-hitting. Those chords had to be spread, which established from the outset a more reflective, less recklessly extrovert character than usual. Despite its virtuoso fireworks this concerto has many tender, almost chamber-like moments – and in these Kolesnikov excelled, especially in the second movement’s opening lullaby and its quicksilver central section. However, he kept plenty of power in reserve for the tsunami of the ending, capping a performance balanced between heroic grandeur, graceful intimacy and physical excitement.

After the interval came one of the few symphonies that can compete with Tchaikovsky in terms of raw emotion and Technicolor orchestration: Rachmaninov’s 2nd. It is one of the longest in the repertoire, each of its four movements containing a glorious, long-breathed tune, luxuriously scored for a huge orchestra. And it is one of the most romantic, nostalgic examples of a symphony which charts an epic journey from the gloomy darkness of its opening to the blaze of bright sunlight with which it ends. Petrenko has become its ideal exponent. The music must have been coursing through his veins for decades and he clearly knows that pacing is the key to a successful performance.

It’s all too easy to wallow in those sumptuous tunes, but discipline is key if the overall effect is going to be exhilarating rather than cloying. The symphony emerged as if new-minted in his hands, full of warmth and impassioned urgency, building climaxes carefully to exploit the symphony’s tingle-factor to the full. The orchestra responded magnificently, especially the RPO’s principal clarinet in the slow movement’s long solo. If cheers and standing ovations are any guide, I don’t think there would have been many objections if Petrenko had decided to encore the whole thing.

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Vasily Petrenko, conductor

Pavel Kolesnikov, piano