Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
Symphony No. 6 in E flat Minor, Op. 111 (1947)
London Symphony Orchestra/ Gianandrea Noseda
rec. live, 26 and 29 January 2023, Barbican Hall, London, UK
Reviewed as a digital download from a press preview
LSO Live LSO0390 [41]
One welcome aspect of own label orchestral recordings has been the increasing release of shorter single works as a digital album. As a listener, I like the focus it enables and LSO Live seem to agree this is the way to go. This new recording from the LSO and Gianandrea Noseda follows on from similar separate digital issues of the First, Third and Fifth Symphonies of Prokofiev. As with those recordings, orchestra and conductor don’t disappoint.
Written in 1947 and successfully premiered by Mravinsky in Leningrad, the Sixth Symphony then quickly fell out of favour as far as further performances were concerned. I’ve read inherently fatuous theorising by various musicologists that this was because (a) the symphony showed too many hints of optimism or (b) that it was too negative or (c) it was neither sufficiently upbeat or downbeat. Take your pick. The Symphony certainly has a tonal ambivalence but trying to somehow rationalise something as inherently irrational and subjective as the judgements of Andrei Zhdanov’s Congress of Composers is a doomed enterprise. In any event it wasn’t until the Khrushchev Thaw in the mid 1950s that the work was more widely performed in the Soviet Union and evaluated properly as the major work it so clearly is. Recordings have abounded since but few in my view have completely successfully managed to balance the conflicts, mood swings and transitions which permeate the work.
Noseda’s approach to the Symphony is bold without being unsubtle and his performance has a consistent excitement from the start, where I love his presentation of the ambiguous 6/8 opening melody. Whether optimistic or pessimistic, it’s certainly an earworm and there’s a delicious impatience in the way the LSO strings and then woodwind seemingly bat it away. It comes as no surprise in this interpretation that the theme become increasingly menacing and as it does, so the orchestra’s playing acquires a corresponding and perfectly judged edginess. One almost doesn’t notice the transition from minor to (tonic) major in the course of this, so restive is the performance and so ambiguous Prokofiev’s harmonies. The Largo starts ominously with brilliantly realised shrieks of panic from the LSO woodwind but then Noseda and the strings skilfully manage one of the trickiest transitions in the piece, the gradual rounding of the edges of that hysterical initial melody into something much warmer. It’s really beautifully done and the rest of the movement seems to unfold organically, which is surely the effect Prokofiev was seeking. The finale is taken at a cracking pace, incisive and crisp with an exhilaration which seems to sweep up the unsmiling return of one of the first movement themes and carry it forward to an electric conclusion. I was lucky enough to be at one of the performances from which this recording was taken and it’s thrilling to hear the concert hall adrenaline captured so well here. For some listeners it might be a bit too dramatic perhaps. Noseda does drive every climax to its full extent and then some, but I don’t think it ever feels cheaply theatrical, he never crosses the line into something more vulgar. Also well-judged is the orchestral balance, which can be a nightmare in this piece. Along with Noseda, particular praise should go to the LSO brass who play with a controlled savagery but never obscure other parts of the orchestra.
This is an exciting contender then for one of the best modern recordings of the work. Néstor Castiglione (review) and David McDade (review) were both very positive on MusicWeb about another recent own label release of the Symphony by the Cleveland Orchestra and Franz Welser-Möst. I agree with them it’s another fine interpretation. If I was being really picky I would say that the Cleveland performance sounds to me a bit more calculated, indeed slightly mannered at times, and the finale feels somewhat forced. I’m sure Noseda calibrated every important detail of the score in his preparation, but unlike Welser-Möst it doesn’t feel like it.
As usual, the LSO live engineers have ensured excellent sound in the Barbican’s acoustic. Noseda’s campaign to cover all bases of the core twentieth century Russian symphonic repertoire continues apace and I’m looking forward to what comes next.
Dominic Hartley
Previous review: Philip Harrison (April 2025)
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