London Philharmonic Orchestra: Symphonie Fantastique – Southbank Centre, London

Conductor: Edward Gardner

Composers: David Sawer, Benjamin Britten, Hector Berlioz

Violin: Augustin Hadelich

The London Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of Edward Gardner, offers another scintillating performance at the Royal Festival Hall.

Before the centrepiece, Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, they play Britten’s Violin Concerto together with the world premiere of David Sawer’s Sphinx. Sawer himself steps on stage to explain his inspiration for the piece as the mythical Sphinx in its Greek, rather than its Egyptian, form, with a female head, the body of a lion and with wings of a bird. Although Sawer talks of its being ‘an amorphous piece’, the elements of creatures prowling and snarling emerge strongly in an orchestration rich with brass, timpani and wind. Flutes create an increasingly anxious mood in the final section after suggestions of gentle swaying in the middle. A likeable, accessible piece.

Violinist Augustin Hadelich joins the orchestra to perform in Britten’s Violin Concerto Op. 15, a piece written during Europe’s slide towards war. Influenced by Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto, Britten discussed with Spanish violinist Antonio Brosa their concerns about the rise of fascism in Spain, Britten promising to write a ‘big, heavyweight concerto’. The resulting piece is in three movements: Moderato con moto, Vivace and finally a Passacaglia. The sense of anxiety is everywhere in the piece, starting with the opening where the big sounds of strings and bass evoke urgency and fear. Against these is the gloriously plangent voice of the solo violin, played with astonishing vibrancy and passion by American-German violinist, Augustin Hadelich. The central gentle, waltz-like music gives way to an altogether darker, more brooding atmosphere.

Berlioz’s extraordinary Symphonie fantastique, composed in 1830, is an exhilarating ride. A programmatic piece, it follows the opium-fuelled journey of a young man, tormented by love, beginning with Rêveries – Passions and moving through four further scenes: Un Bal, Scène aux Champs, Marche au Supplice to the final Witches Sabbath: Songe d’une Nuit du Sabbat. It’s scored for a vast orchestra, which allows for an extraordinary richness and range of moods.

Berlioz’s main theme emerges out of the delicately lyrical opening of strings and flutes, soon to be challenged by the powerfully dark sounds of cellos and double basses. Four harps lead the dance in the second movement, which yields to the enchanting Scène aux Champs, where Berlioz depicts two shepherds playing a melancholic ranz des vaches. The sweet tones of Sue Böhling’s cor anglais and Alice Munday’s oboe, are made more poignant by being performed, as is traditional, with the oboe off stage, suggesting a distant calling between valleys.

All too soon, however, the mood changes completely as the strident march to the scaffold begins the third movement. Snarling brasses remind us of Sawer’s Sphinx as the music drives onwards to the darkly triumphant end of the fourth movement. Bells toll for the Dies irae as the protagonist of Berlioz’s piece imagines his own funeral surrounded by demonic figures.

Reviewed on 26 February 2025