It has been a momentous year for Tugan Sokhiev. This time last December he was announced as new music director of Welsh National Opera and, after auspicious debuts with a clutch of orchestras since then, he has now added the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Sokhiev was very much on home territory with a programme of Russian music, and there was ample demonstration of his deeply instinctive approach and technical flair.
Prokofiev undertook his First Symphony as an exercise in the classical style, but the acerbic wit and irony so characteristic of his style was also underlined here, with Sokhiev deliciously pointing up the moments Prokofiev where subverts harmonic patterns and confounds expectations. The gavotta was very much a caricature, but an affectionate one, while the finale positively raced along with an engaging exuberance.
Cellist Paul Watkins was the soloist for Sokhiev's responsive and responsible handling of Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations. The opening bars proved a test of nerves for both soloist and conductor when strange caterwauling turned out to be a baby who had to be rushed from the auditorium; it was a case of grin and bear it with aplomb. Like the Prokofiev, these variations hark back to the proportions and refinements of the 18th century; as a result they can sometimes subside into a mannered progression of trills and frills, but not only is Watkins too expressive a player to allow that to happen, his fluent command of the highly virtuosic passages made this a vivid performance.
After the extraordinary intensity Valery Gergiev and the Kirov Orchestra recently gave Rimsky-Korsakov's symphonic suite Sheherezade, it seemed unlikely that Sokhiev, who comes from the same St Petersburg stable, could produce anything as stirring. But his interpretation was equally rewarding, with waves of richly lyrical sound and solos from the CBSO principals, notably leader Jacqueline Hartley and flautist Jonathan Snowden. It had all the appropriate fantasy and imagination for the Arabian nights setting. Sokhiev hype will continue but, reassuringly, most of it will be true.
