The granitic expressions in evidence throughout much of this opening concert of the UK-Russia Year of Culture might suggest that the members of the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra of Moscow Radio have had little or no say in Vladimir Fedoseyev’s 40-year reign over the group.
However, perhaps this was merely symptomatic of a tense, under prepared day at the office. Downbeats were missing in action during Vaughan Williams’ Tallis Fantasia, lending the sonorous chordal progressions a woozy discomfort that resurfaced in the overwhelmingly weird (and undeserved) encore: a cut-and-pasted, coda-less, rubato-free Pomp and Circumstance March no.1, which, with its tambourines and jingles, metamorphosed into a Shostakovichian portrait of a tank annihilating a squadron of Morris dancers.
The obligatory Russian fireworks arrived with a pacey Polovtsian Dances and an uncharacteristically frenetic Vadim Repin in the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, but one would never have guessed from the intermittently scrappy rendition of Elgar’s Enigma Variations that this orchestra and conductor had performed the piece together only a week earlier in Moscow.
For all the strangeness and sloppiness, this ensemble is worth hearing for the quality of the string sound alone. It’s enormously resonant, underpinned by eight excellent basses, and one was grateful for the moments in the Borodin and Vaughan Williams in which Fedoseyev gave it time to bloom fully.
