Orchestra of the ROH/Pappano, Royal Opera House, classical review: Displaying the kind of versatility we usually take for granted

The original version of Musorgsky’s Night on a Bare Mountain exploded like a succession of fireworks

Michael Church
Tuesday 09 February 2016 13:15 GMT
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The Mighty Handful
The Mighty Handful

It’s been widely pointed out, in the ongoing debate over whether London ‘needs’ a Rattle Auditorium, that the capital already has two very decent symphonic halls, and we forget that there’s a third. The Royal Opera House may not often be available for symphony concerts, but it has an excellent acoustic and 2,250 seats.

This wasn’t Antonio Pappano’s theme when he introduced this concert of Russia’s Mighty Handful – Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Musorgsky, Balakirev, and Cui. As he rightly observed, the music of this tight-knit group – Musorgsky and Rimsky shared both a flat and a piano as they toiled on different operas – deserves to be better known, and this concert by his personal ‘army’ would showcase something unexpected from each of them.

The Prelude and Battle Scene from Rimsky’s Kitezh transported us to the steppes where clarinet and flute evoked cuckoo and lark, then Borodin’s Symphony No 2 brought pre-echoes of Prince Igor. The original version of Musorgsky’s Night on a Bare Mountain exploded like a succession of fireworks; Cui’s little-known Prelude to Act III of William Ratcliff unfurled with slow elegance; Casella’s arrangement of Balakirev’s turbulent Islamey played us out. Briefly in the spotlight, Pappano’s army displayed the versatility and virtuosity we usually take for granted.

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