United Kingdom Mosolov, Rachmaninov, Korsun, Prokofiev: Anna Vinnitskaya (piano), London Philharmonic Orchestra / Vladimir Jurowski (conductor). Royal Festival Hall, London, 21.1.2026. (CK)
Alexander Mosolov – The Iron Foundry
Rachmaninov – Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
Anna Korsun – Terricone
Prokofiev – Symphony No.2
This concert proved that the synergy between Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic is as strong as ever, five years on from his 14 years as their Principal Conductor. Their performance of Lyatoshynsky’s Symphony No.3 was one of my standout concert experiences of 2025, and this may well prove to be one of those for 2026. Expectations are high for the completion of their long-range Mahler cycle with the forthcoming Tenth Symphony, in Rudolf Barshai’s performing edition.
Yet the bill of fare may well have looked, to some, distinctly unpromising: Rachmaninov’s dazzling Paganini Rhapsody hemmed in by two blistering monuments of 1920’s Russian Constructivism and a contemporary piece which takes no prisoners.
A century on, another hundred years of our planet’s capacity to support life squandered, it is hard for us to feel the optimism, the celebratory joy in the brutal dissonances of Alexander Mosolov’s notorious The Iron Foundry: yet while the music lasts, in a performance like this, we have a taste of it. Pistons clanked, piledrivers pounded, trumpets screeched, trombones blared, flutes and piccolo whirred; the five horns, standing with raised bells, yelled euphorically over the tumult. Wonderfully loud, and all over in less than four minutes.
Only a few weeks after their impressive performance of Rachmaninov’s problematic Symphony No.3 under Edward Gardner, it was good to hear the LPO tackle another late work – the Paganini Rhapsody – about which no critic has ever carped: they were very much on point, the strings lithe and sprightly. At first, I wondered whether Anna Vinnitskaya’s neat playing might presage a rather bland performance: but of course the magician Rachmaninov ensures that blandness is not an option for the pianist, and her playing gave consistent pleasure without ever becoming overly rhetorical.
The Dies Irae at Variation 7 gave the music depth without over-emphasis. The ensuing Variations brought brilliance, a dash of diabolism, Romantic warmth: Vinnitskaya’s delicate passagework seeming, at one point, to transform the piano into a harp. The sublime Variation 18 – Rachmaninov’s major-key inversion of Paganini’s theme – swam in with the tide and floated out again with no clouding of the music’s flow. It was a lovely performance, beautifully proportioned; and despite Rachmaninov’s superb artifice it sounded completely natural.
I have heard Ukrainian composer Anna Korsun’s Terricone before, performed by Kirill Karabits and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, who commissioned it: so I was prepared for its shock tactics and its unusual percussion. This is no mere attempt to épater les bourgeois though: it is full of cries – human and imitated by instruments – and it has a terrible pallor which evokes all too clearly the memories of a composer who grew up in the Donbas amid artificial mountains of mining waste. What her country has suffered, and continues to suffer, from Putin’s Special Military Operation gives it contemporary force. Korsun says ‘listeners and performers can interpret it in different ways’. What I saw in my mind’s eye was dust blown along the wrecked streets of Mariupol. And Gaza.
Jurowski, elegant and authoritative as always, ensured that we were spared no detail (the huge score, a yard across, overflowed its stand). His ability to sustain disciplined, laser-like intensity over long spans served him – and us – well in the extraordinary first movement of Prokofiev’s Second Symphony: a brutal, dissonant fanfare, and we were back where we started in Mosolov’s foundry. A work ‘made of iron and steel’ was Prokofiev’s intention; Robert Layton described it as ‘an interminably sustained fortissimo relieved only by an occasional forte’. Prokofiev doesn’t inflate his orchestral forces – the orchestra is comparable to that of Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony, in fact with less percussion – but goodness, he makes the musicians work! In addition to his intellectual acuity Jurowski was clearly exhilarated by the music (his feet left the podium at least twice).
The opening of the second movement – a rather beautiful threnody for clarinet over rocking strings – brought some respite, not least for the brass and percussion players. Strings and woodwind held the stage; there was some tricky work for the contrabassoon, some cool lyricism …and then, with scurrying woodwind and martial strings, we were pitched back into the foundry. Agile trumpets, a seismic march for double basses and contrabassoon that came to us through the floor, an onslaught of horns and bass drum; a giant processional (Varèse’s Amériques, written a few years earlier, didn’t seem far away) before the music slowly dissolved via a plaintive oboe and a lugubrious bassoon.
I am very glad I heard this performance, and I cannot imagine this music being better done. Not even by Valery Gergiev and the London Symphony Orchestra, a little over 20 years ago. And what a pleasure it was to see the double basses brought to their feet, rightly and enthusiastically cheered.
Chris Kettle