Barbican Hall. LSO & A. Pappano. Lisa Batiashvili. Berlious

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 overwhelmed the solo line.

What was particularly striking was the unanimity of approach between conductor, soloist, and ensemble. Batiashvili’s expressive subtlety found a perfect echo in the LSO’s finely balanced sonorities. The soft-edged colours of the woodwinds and strings in the opening passages gave way to moments of blazing energy, culminating in a finale that shimmered like an opalescent storm cloud. The audience, momentarily hushed after the last note, erupted into sustained applause—a response that felt not only enthusiastic but also grateful.

After the interval came Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, a work as much a feat of orchestration as of narrative drama. Here, Pappano was in his element. From the first uneasy stirrings of the Rêveries to the grotesque revels of the Witches’ Sabbath, he shaped the arc of the symphony with cinematic clarity and operatic flair. The LSO played magnificently. The strings, especially in the Scène aux champs, spun a hushed, desolate poetry, while the brass blazed with sinister exuberance in the finale.

Yet it was the precision, not just the passion, that elevated this performance. The notorious “March to the Scaffold” was not simply thrilling—it was eerily focused, with each snare drum crack and bassoon grunt placed with surgical intent. Pappano resisted the temptation to indulge the score’s eccentricities, instead drawing from the orchestra a performance of uncommon discipline and structural coherence.

In all, it was an evening that reminded us not just of the LSO’s technical excellence, but of its ability—under Pappano’s instinctive leadership—to inhabit vastly different musical worlds with integrity and imagination. A triumph of programming and execution.

Paul Lakra