Barbican, London
Rachmaninov's piano concertos are regularly wheeled out when concert halls need filling, but we rarely get to hear The Bells, his 1913 choral symphony setting a loose Russian translation of Edgar Allan Poe. It's not an austerity choice ? as a glance at the Barbican's stage, full almost to overflowing with the BBC Symphony Chorus and Orchestra and three vocal soloists, was enough to confirm. But in this concert, the first of two under conductor Semyon Bychkov, it seemed among the most sumptuous and exciting of Rachmaninov's works.
Not everything clicked immediately ? the first movement's sleigh-bell effects require scattered instruments to play together with pinpoint co-ordination, and they didn't. Yet this hardly mattered when the choral singing sounded so explosively vibrant ? strong enough to overwhelm even Frank Lopardo's beefy tenor solos.
Wedding bells don't usually sound as ominous as they did at the start of the second movement, characterised otherwise by Viktoria Yastrebova's velvety soprano and a violin tone plush enough to lose oneself in. But it was in the third, Loud Alarum Bells, that Bychkov came into his own, whipping up chorus and orchestra into a tautly controlled depiction of spiralling panic. The BBCSO did an admirable impression of a hefty-voiced Russian ensemble; in the mournful finale, baritone David Wilson Johnson, a late but communicative stand-in for an absent Russian, was just as convincing.
Pairing this virtuoso score with a work as relentlessly demanding as Walton's Symphony No 1 might seem like sadism towards the orchestra, but the BBCSO were unfazed, and they maintained the tense rhythms of the Walton's opening with unflagging pace. It's a juggernaut of a symphony, but under Bychkov it sounded expansively, generously lyrical, as well as driven. This orchestra play wonderfully for him ? and the audience, who maintained pin-drop silence until he relaxed at the end of each work, seem equally under his spell.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/mar/22/bbcso-bychkov-review
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