12 November 2008 - Royal Festival Hall
Vladimir Jurowski conducts Debussy, Stravinsky and Rachmaninov
This was thrilling: a daring, yet meaningful juxtaposition of four highly contrasted 20th-century showpieces, vividly directed by one of the most inspirational young conductors, and delivered by a London Philharmonic Orchestra at the top of its form to an audience that hung on its every note … Here a concert of taxing music took off into something else, as if conductor and orchestra were possessed. It was rather awesome.
Bayan Northcott, The Independent
5 November 2008 - Royal Festival Hall
Vladimir Jurowski conducts Schumann, Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky
Sooner or later a series called Revealing Tchaikovsky is bound to produce a concert that is unmitigated manic depression from start to finish. This was it. ... So did I stagger out feeling, as someone in Dostoevsky says, “like killing myself or my neighbour”? Quite the opposite. When gloomy masterpieces are played with energy and intelligence, the effect is life-enhancing, not enervating.
Such was the case here. Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic have already done many fine things in this series. But their Manfred was as vitalised, as sharp in rapport and crystal-clear in texture (especially in the sinister, quicksilver scurryings of the “Alpine Witch” scherzo) as anything heard so far.
As one now expects from Jurowski, the string sound was lighter and less searingly intense than maestros of an older generation tended to encourage in Tchaikovsky. Instead, there was a white-knuckle tension and a real sense of a wild and tragic story recounted with enthralling detail, vivid colour and pace.
Richard Morrison, The Times
Wednesday saw a gripping performance of Tchaikovsky's "Manfred" Symphony, which Jurowski recorded with the London Philharmonic Orchestra not long after he took over as principal conductor, but even that paled alongside the unremitting concentration here. This symphony, so often dismissed as hit-and-miss, is rarely played as if every note matters so much.
Richard Fairman, Financial Times
29 October 2008 - Royal Festival Hall
Neeme Järvi conducts Tchaikovsky and Taneyev
Järvi and the LPO emphasised the sheer architectural splendour of the piece. You could feel its pacing and its proportions, its sculptings and its undergirdings: from the taut, compellingly dissonant opening through to its cumulative transformations. ..
The players of the LPO seemed delighted by what they had discovered, and it left the audience hungry for more. Taneyev’s completion and orchestration of Tchaikovsky’s Third Piano Concerto will be along next.
Hilary Finch, The Times
25 October 2008 - Royal Festival Hall
Vladimir Jurowski conducts Tchaikovsky's Iolanta
Part of the Revealing Tchaikovsky season, Vladimir Jurowski's concert performance with the LPO is the latest in a sequence of distinguished re-evaluations, aimed at restoring the piece to the repertoire. Here, we were reminded of the score's cumulative power and of Tchaikovsky's striking orchestral symbolism, which pits woodwind darkness against bright strings, with the brass acting as intermediaries between the two.
Tim Ashley, The Guardian
The playing here was fabulous, beautifully clear but full of affection and a tremulous suppressed emotion we don't normally associate with Tchaikovsky. This really was a revelation.
Ivan Hewett, Telegraph
22 October 2008 - Royal Festival Hall
Vladimir Jurowski conducts Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky
Tchaikovsky always led with his heart - but Jurowski's fastidious and loving attention to detail in the First Symphony displayed its classical credentials in ways that it rarely does. It's interesting how, technically speaking, the odd frayed end or dropped stitch matters so little in the context of a Jurowski performance. This one was on the money from start to finish, its disciplined and wonderfully heard counterpoint liberating not constraining the melodic invention. ... If anyone can "reveal" the real Tchaikovsky, this man can.
Edward Seckerson, Independent
27 September 2008 - Royal Festival Hall
Vladimir Jurowski conducts Strauss, Hartmann and Brahms.
And after the annual post-Proms hiatus, the symphonic season bursts into full life, each major orchestra displaying its glittering wares for the months ahead. If Saturday’s London Philharmonic Orchestra concert is a portent, this may be a vintage year.
Fiona Maddocks, Evening Standard
And, finally, Brahms's Second Symphony. Once more, Jurowski made us think. In what might have been mistaken for a bland performance, he freed the music to flow effortlessly from one dynamic, metre and tempo to another, eloquently and compellingly revealing how the parts evolved into the whole.
Hilary Finch, The Times
24 September 2008 - Royal Festival Hall
Vladimir Jurowski conducts Vaughan Williams, Turnage, Ligeti and Stravinsky.
Vladimir Jurowski launched his second season with the London Philharmonic Orchestra with a programme that had us feeling like we'd never heard a note of this music before. In the case of Mark-Anthony Turnage's new violin concerto, Mambo, Blues and Tarantella, we hadn't, of course, but coming as it did after Vaughan Williams's Eighth Symphony, the notion of what it is to be a British composer in the 20th and 21st centuries heightened our responses to both pieces. This wasn't a programme, it was a manifesto for change.... Then came the most startling coup – a segue from Ligeti's Atmospheres into Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. Here, Jurowski really challenged our perceptions. Suddenly it was a ballet again, with forensic clarity and rhythmic incisiveness. We emerged exhilarated.
Edward Seckerson, Independent
What impresses about Vladimir Jurowski almost as much as his insouciantly assured conducting technique and the high intelligence of his interpretations is the boldness that he shows in programming the London Philharmonic’s concerts. This isn’t yet the most virtuosic orchestra in London. But true music-lovers are flocking to hear it because Jurowski is devising such intriguing combinations of works, then coaxing his players to perform them so persuasively.
It’s a winning formula, as the opening concert of the LPO’s season showed. What a brilliant idea to slide into The Rite of Spring without pause or applause (Jurowski even kept a beat going, to fool us) after György Ligeti’s 1961 avant-garde classic Atmospheres, so that Stravinsky’s bassoon emerged out of Ligeti’s wispy, endlessly drifting clouds of clusters. It was rather as if one had been taken on a journey through the mists of time to some savage, primordial ceremony.
And what a thrilling rediscovery Jurowski and the LPO made of The Rite when they reached it. The radical speeds, and speed changes; the emphasis on gritty textures; the sudden spotlighting of details that are normally hidden in the splurge: all this made one listen anew to a piece that is sadly often made to sound all too routine.
Richard Morrison, The Times
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