The London Symphony Orchestra came to Carnegie Hall for a two-concert stand: Wednesday and Thursday nights. On the podium was Antonio Pappano, the chief conductor of the orchestra. Actually, he is “Sir Antonio.” Shortly after his knighting, I interviewed him in front of an audience (at the Salzburg Festival). I said, “So you’re ‘Sir Tony’ now?” He said, with amusing gravity, “Sir Antonio.”
Wednesday night’s concert, I will address in the future. (It was very good.) Thursday’s had a soloist: Yunchan Lim, the sensational young pianist. In two weeks, he will turn twenty-one. With the LSO, he played a Rachmaninoff concerto, the second, in C minor.
The opening chords were beautiful, and beautifully calibrated. When the orchestra came in, conductor and pianist could not quite get together. It seemed to me that the pianist wanted to go faster, the conductor slower. The conductor won, I think—and kept winning throughout the concerto. Mr. Lim was tamer than he has been in the past. (Imagine, having a past at age twenty.) But he was still dynamic.
He makes beautiful sounds. He pays attention to various voices within music such as this concerto. He is dizzyingly virtuosic, but is casual about that virtuosity. With his fingers, he can do whatever he wants. He is supple, lapidary. Some of the rubato is a little screwy, I think—but I would rather have him idiosyncratic than staidly conventional.
In the slow movement—which contains some very, very fast music—he was singerly. At the same time, the movement dragged, I felt. Thinking of Mahler, and one of his favorite markings, I wanted to call out, “Nicht schleppen!” (“Don’t drag!”).
After the finale, there was tumultuous applause. Someone handed Mr. Lim a bouquet. He immediately—immediately—turned and handed it to a female member of the orchestra. Young soloists do this, routinely. They must be under the impression that it is polite. I wish they could know how rude it is.
Think of the flower-giver (often a young woman), who has waited to give the flowers to her idol.
After sustained applause, and curtain calls, Lim was induced to play an encore: he played one of Liszt’s Petrarch sonnets, “Pace non trovo.” I thought once again of the universality of music. Lim, born in Gyeonggi Province, South Korea, in the twenty-first century, has the Old World within him: Vienna, Budapest, Hamburg . . .
The audience wanted another encore, applauding, robustly, on and on. I had never heard such applause after an encore following a concerto. Mr. Lim probably could have played three or four—but he stopped at the one.
On the second half of the program was a symphony, the Symphony No. 1 of William Walton (he wrote two). Lots of people think this work ought to be a staple, not a relative rarity. They have a point.
Before last night, the symphony had been heard only six times in Carnegie Hall. (The work premiered in 1935.) The most recent performance had been in 1992. The New York Philharmonic has played it only three times—most recently in ’91.
Some of us were reminiscing about a performance in 2005—by the LSO under Sir Colin Davis in Avery Fisher Hall (as that hall was then known). The other work on the program was the Vaughan Williams No. 6. That was a stellar afternoon.
I have a question for you: Is Walton’s Symphony No. 1 a British symphony? It is a symphony by a Brit, for sure. But it is not classically British, if you will. It is full of Sturm und Drang. It is also superb.
From the LSO and Sir Antonio Pappano, we got a superb reading. Every page was alive. The conductor understands the logic of the work, and he understands its feeling, or feelings. He was effective at the level of the grand and at the level of the granular. The second movement has a wonderful marking: “Scherzo: Presto con malizia.” Carnegie Hall was full of imps. And Sir Antonio demonstrated tremendous rhythmic concentration, doing Walton’s math.
The LSO is loaded with talent. The timpanist was stylish, accurate—so musical, with those sticks, or mallets. The trumpeter sang like a prince.
We had an encore, Sibelius’s Valse triste, on which you could have floated away.
What are the best orchestras in the world? “Well, you have the VPO and the BPO,” I usually say. (The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.) Then I might mutter something about the Concertgebouw.
I am reminded: don’t forget the frickin’ LSO.
