Royal Albert Hall, LondonTurn of the century compositions by Rachmaninov, Rimsky-Korsakov and Lyadov make up a superbly played programme led by Vladimir Jurowski
Russian nights at the Proms generally include at least one very familiar, often all too familiar, warhorse. But there was nothing hackneyed in Vladimir Jurowski’s programme from his homeland. It was made up entirely of pieces from the decades on either side of 1900 that are rarely encountered in
British concert halls, all of which were originally introduced to the
UK by Henry Wood and form part of the current season’s Henry Wood novelties series.
Even the one item that was standard fare, Rachmaninov’s First Piano Concerto, turned out to be nothing of the sort. Instead of the revised version that the composer produced in 1917 and which is almost invariably heard today, this was the original score from 1891, which was later withdrawn and not published until 1971. It wasn’t recorded until Alexander Ghindin did so in 2001; Ghindin was also the soloist here, doing his best to make the hefty solo writing – clearly indebted to Grieg’s concerto – seem less overbearing, and the discursive finale less episodic.