Review: Royal Liverpool Philharmonic

The St.Petersburg-born, Vasily Petrenko, possesses that indefinable charisma given to just a handful of conductors, the spell he weaves

over his listeners is tangible – you could hear a proverbial pin being dropped before the capacity audience greeted each performance with rapturous applause. He had chosen an all-Russian programme, and from the gleaming bright trumpet fanfare that opened Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italien, it was evident that this was an orchestra in peak condition, the swagger Petrenko generated as the work progressed concluding in a riot of orchestral colours. He had brought with him the Moscow-born Boris Giltburg, as a staggeringly brilliant soloist in Shostakovich’s Second Piano Concerto, so technically gifted that for once we heard the outer movements played at the almost impossible speeds the composer requests. That Petrenko is not just flashy podium virtuoso, came in the often delicate account of Prokofiev’s ‘Classical’ Symphony, as he persuaded his strings to play with a magical pianissimo. And so it was left to the Third Suite from Khachaturian’s ballet, Gayana, with its mix of sensuous Eastern dances and extrovert Sabre Dance to bring the evening to a close, but not until the audience were rewarded with more Gayana as an encore. David Denton