Zimmermann, LPO, Saraste, Royal Festival Hall

A tough programme of four hypertense works rivetingly played

by David NiceWednesday, 15 December 2010

Jukka-Pekka Saraste: Electrifyingly assured in toughest Nielsen

If you've just come back from a taxing, tiring orchestral tour, as has the London Philharmonic, the last thing you want to face is a programme of four tough works which demand, at the very least, bright-eyed vigilance but more often a tense, finger-wrecking articulation. So the players must have been relieved to find firm hands on the wheel in the shape of the electrifyingly assured Finnish master Jukka-Pekka Saraste and that most intelligent, repertoire-curious of solo violinists, Frank Peter Zimmermann.

The oscillating violas which launch Nielsen's Fifth Symphony had none of the usual in-the-beginning mystery, rather a sense of threat from radio-wave interference

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