LSO/Adès review – the mood-boosting musical equivalent of a sad lamp | London Symphony Orchestra

forAt this point in October, the short days, dim light and autumn drizzle are inevitable, but this concert by the London Symphony Orchestra – the first in a short series of LSO programs this season and the next curated by composer and conductor Thomas Adès – seemed designed to dispel any seasonal gloom, its intense flow of vibrant orchestral colors and effervescent noise acting as the musical equivalent of a lamp. The sad one.

The UK premiere of Alex Paxton’s World Builder, Creature set the tone from the shimmering jukebox as it opened, with the upper woodwinds flying and skimming the surface and the lower brass wandering around the depths. The complex textures of the score were almost miraculously evident. Muted horns seemed to have escaped from a big band, a piano riffed chaotically amidst the strings, and more beautiful rhythmic grooves came to an abrupt halt. At one point, an elephant trumpet sounded in one of these sudden pauses before a whole new set of ideas emerged, bright and cheerful, as Adès bravely leapt onto the stage.

Paul Rudders’ Paganini Variations for Guitar and Orchestra (Guitar Concerto No. 2) involves a similar erudition – Paganini’s famous theme sometimes emerges through Ruders’s altogether more barbed musical language – but with a less obvious sense of humour. Sean Shippey did light work on the witty solo passages but shined above all on the sparse textures, where his delicate, vibrato-filled melodic lines had room to breathe. Elsewhere, the orchestra periodically swallowed up the guitar despite the amplification.

Both Paxton and Rodders were in the audience and remained in place through the second half, at which point this concert’s great course in programming took off. In Sibelius’ Symphony No. 3, the trumpets cut through the string movements like rays of light, the pizzicato was soft and the timpani strokes were elemental, and the orchestral orchestration was absolute throughout. The finale rushed cheerfully towards the closing of the major trilogy. These are made to seem even brighter when followed by Adès’ own aquifer, which rolls, shakes, thunders and recedes in waves of sustained, multi-coloured orchestral movement. In this dazzling, high-fidelity performance, it was a joyful send-off.