Russian Art And Music In London

There are few conductors today who can command a programme of sweeping Romantic colour and crystalline detail with the balance and conviction that Sir Antonio Pappano brings to the podium. On Thursday night at the Barbican, he led the London Symphony Orchestra in a tautly conceived pairing of Szymanowski and Berlioz, a programme that played to the LSO’s formidable strengths in both atmosphere and articulation. The evening began with Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto No. 1, a rhapsodic, dream-haunted work whose elusive structure and saturated harmonies can all too easily dissolve into sonic haze. Not so here. From the first shimmering gestures, it was clear that soloist Lisa Batiashvili had the measure of the piece. Her tone, radiant yet steely, soared effortlessly above the LSO’s translucent textures. She brought both the lyrical inwardness and the biting folkloric edge that the score demands, and Pappano, ever the attentive collaborator, ensured that the orchestral threads never overwhelm...