Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham, 27 March 2025, 5☆☆☆☆☆. Review: William Ruff.

Photo Credit: Marco Borggreve.

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham,  27 March 2025, 

5☆☆☆☆☆.  Review: William Ruff.

“RPO on top form in a big, bold, spectacular programme.”

If you like your music to be cool and pastel-shaded, then you probably stayed away from this Royal Philharmonic concert - because their programme was big, bold, full of drama and clothed in orchestral sound saturated in vivid colours. Chief Conductor Vasily Petrenko was in charge: a musician well able to keep his head whilst delivering music which aims its emotional punch at the solar plexus.

Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture glows with the passion of young lovers beset by the enmity of their respective families.  Its popularity ensures such frequent airings that it can seem hackneyed in tired hands.  Fortunately, the RPO was on the edge of their seats for this performance.  The opening theme for Friar Laurence had plenty of thoughtful solemnity before the swashbuckling music for the conflict of the Montagues and Capulets and, of course, for one of the most famous love themes of them all.  Petrenko managed a satisfying balance between the brooding introduction, the focused energy of the fight music and the almost operatic tenderness of the great love theme.  The RPO’s strings in particular sang their hearts out.

Soloist Esther Yoo joined the orchestra for another concert favourite, Bruch’s Violin Concerto No 1.  Bruch was one of those composers who wrote a huge amount of music across a wide variety of genres but who is now known just for one piece, admittedly a super-popular one.  You can see why it’s always near the top of the classical pops, however: its ideas are not only beautiful but also instantly memorable: the tender opening movement, the Hungarian-style finale and, more than both of these, the profoundly poignant song which is the slow movement.  Esther Yoo’s brilliance as an interpreter was evident both to the ears and the eyes: silkily elegant, dazzlingly virtuosic and able to make this (perhaps) over-familiar work sing anew.

After the interval came the 5th Symphony by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev.  First performed in January 1945, just as the Russians were advancing into Germany, this symphony couldn’t have had a more dramatic debut, the conductor (Prokofiev himself) having to wait, baton in hand, until the celebratory artillery salute to the victorious army had finished.  The 5th Symphony is a work of huge contrasts: the opening has heroic sweep in which beauty is often threatened by violence; the second is alternately perky and deeply mysterious; the third is tragic (but always beautiful); the finale tries to be jolly but eventually spins out of control in ways that appear madly disturbing. 

All this needs careful handling.  Vasily Petrenko has this music in his blood stream – and so does the RPO.  Their performance had weight, vividness and razor-sharp timing with each small detail (across a vast orchestral canvas) placed within the whole.  Prokofiev was difficult to pin down both as a man and as a composer and this performance was similarly multi-faceted.  Romantic breadth, lurid sarcasm, pulse-racing excitement: they were all there in this RPO showpiece spectacular.

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra: Vasily Petrenko (conductor), Esther Yoo (violin)