Page 379 - Liverpool Philharmonic 22-23 Season Coverage Book

The RLPO’s E flat bell, ‘the Vasily’. Photograph: Jennifer Johnston

For the final movement of Pictures, the Great Gate of Kyiv, the enormous, gleaming E
flat bell was positioned high on the stage. Nicknamed “the Vasily”, after the orchestra’s
former chief conductor, Vasily Petrenko, its inauguration should have been on a
Japanese tour in 2020, cancelled because of Covid. This was its first outing. Petrenko’s
name is engraved on the front, with decorative castings of Liver birds and sea holly (the
flower of Liverpool). After the woodwind’s solemn chorale, which calls to mind the
cathedral domes of Kyiv, the climactic moment arrived. Johns climbed up and struck
the bell – 30 times, if I counted correctly – pausing, then striking it again for the work’s
final bars. The insistent toll, with all its strange resonances and overtones, cut through
the fortissimo orchestral sound. Ukraine and Liverpool, united by music.

If only the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s performance of the same Rachmaninov
concerto had had a similar excitement. (I have an inexhaustible Rachmaninov
fascination – to the extent that I have been writing a book about him – and was keen to
hear it again.) The Russian-American soloist Kirill Gerstein is a peerless performer,
with so much to express. The admirable LPO, too, has so much to offer. But the generic
gestures of the conductor, Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, as if waving through the soaring
melodies, reduced everyone’s best efforts to homogeneity. Violas? Swishing cymbals?
Where were they? Absorbed in the unvaried texture.