Though the London Symphony Orchestra returned from its summer break last week for a gala to celebrate Colin Davis's 75th birthday, this concert marked the official opening of their new season. The programme - Sibelius's Sixth Symphony and Brahms's First Piano Concerto - was characterised by a high seriousness of purpose and an overwhelming emotional and intellectual intensity. For all their familiarity, both works remain radical and shocking re-evaluations of musical potential. And both can still tax players and audiences to the limit.
Sibelius's Sixth is often described as "low-key," which effectively means the composer abandoned his usual rhetoric of struggle and triumph in favour of a muted expressionism that leads to music at once quiet and extreme. The harmonic palette is modal, which means the entire symphony swings disconcertingly between major and minor keys. Though the work is structured around the ceaseless development of fragmentary, cell-like themes, Sibelius denies us the certainty of emotional resolution by simply allowing the individual movements to break off in mid-phrase rather than drawing them to a formal close.
It is a difficult work. Davis, however, is in his element with it, drawing us with great clarity through its strange, tantalising logic yet at the same time keeping its essential mystery intact. He favours a lean, sparse orchestral sound - romantic overload is fatal here - and the LSO's playing, all sinewy strings, sepulchral brass and fluttery, bird-like woodwind, is to die for.
Brahms's Concerto, meanwhile, blends the grandest of romantic gestures with the severity of classical form in order to encompass what remains the most titanic duel between pianist and orchestra ever composed. Davis's soloist is Radu Lupu, ostensibly one of the most undemonstrative of artists. Watching him play, you are struck by the contrast between the quiet, thoughtful man sitting in his chair (he never uses a piano stool) and the torrent of sound and emotion he unleashes. Blending intelligence with feeling, he is a supreme Brahms interpreter: weighty without being rough or declamatory, sensitive and profound, though never sentimental.
Davis matches Lupu turn for turn, leaving you with the impression that each is goading the other to produce music that will take you on a massive spiritual journey. It is genuinely overwhelming. The Sibelius is being recorded for the orchestra's own label, LSO Live. The Brahms isn't, which is a shame.
