LPO/Jurowski review – looking death in the face with unflinching intensity

Royal Festival Hall, London
Patricia Kopatchinskaja brought tenderness to the heartbreak of Berg’s violin concerto, and the London Philharmonic were outstanding in Shostakovich’s 15th

Even in the week of radio presenter Steve Hewlett’s very public passing, death is still often the last taboo. Vladimir Jurowski’s latest themed concert with the London Philharmonic looked the grim reaper straight in the eye from start to finish. It consisted of three works, all written in death’s shadow and all of which are tempting to read in the light of their composers’ deaths soon afterwards.

Jurowski started with the least familiar, Edison Denisov’s second symphony, composed in 1996, his final year. The symphony, in two movements played without a break and much influenced by modernist aesthetics, begins with translucent liquidity in the winds that is gradually overwhelmed by more emphatic writing, so that it seems almost like a journey from light into darkness.

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