The St Petersburg Philharmonic’s London concert under Yuri Temirkanov closed with Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, of which the orchestra gave the world premiere 80 years ago. Their close association with the composer’s music gives their performances an inevitable reputation for authority, but this was a low-key interpretation, faultlessly played – as one might expect from this most resplendent of orchestras – although occasionally lacking tension and abrasion.
Temirkanov shaded the first movement towards elegy. The march that intrudes on its course was not as menacing as it can be, and the scherzo was similarly short on bite. The emotional level intensified in the largo, and the finale was edge-of-your-seat stuff, with a powerful final lurch into forced triumphalism.
The high point, however, was Martha Argerich’s performance of Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto. This is a familiar interpretation and a uniquely great one, dazzling in the precision and freshness she brings to it, and astonishing in the way she holds Prokofiev’s mixture of wit, aggression and sentiment in perfect balance. Her encore was Liszt’s transcription of Schumann’s Widmung, breathtaking in its beauty and restraint.
Temirkanov opened, meanwhile, with a couple of extracts from Khachaturian’s Spartacus. The famous adagio sounded gorgeous, and might have been even more overwhelming played a fraction slower. The suggestively accelerating Dance of the Gaditanian Maidens was spine-tinglingly sensual. The orchestra’s only encore, a brief extract from Prokofiev’s Cinderella, showed off the voluptuous sheen in the strings to perfection.
