Alina Ibragimova steams through Shostakovich

As cases of the Omicron variant rise, the entertainment sector will be hoping that people continue to head out to events. For those who choose stay at home, at least there is online music again.

The new season of concerts by the London Philharmonic Orchestra is available to stream on Marquee.tv (though some weeks after the live event). We are also back to frequent changes of programme due to Covid travel restrictions; at the LPO’s concert last week, Alina Ibragimova found herself stepping in at the last moment to play Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No 1. It was not a random choice; Ibragimova recently made an award-winning recording of the concerto with conductor Vladimir Jurowski, so the duo were already primed.

Their live performance at the Royal Festival Hall only upped the ante — lean, tense, extraordinarily concentrated and working up a breathtaking head of steam. Ibragimova looked exhausted at the end, as if she had been hurtling around a racetrack after Jurowski, and relieved that they had crossed the finishing line at the same time.

The centrepiece of the programme was a partly new work by Australian composer-in-residence Brett Dean, whose opera Hamlet was given its premiere by Jurowski and the LPO at Glyndebourne. Dean wrote Notturno inquieto for the Berlin Philharmonic, the orchestra where he played viola for many years, but he has now added a short prelude for sampled sounds, percussion and double basses. The join feels seamless and this dark and spooky night piece offers a fertile proliferation of perfectly detailed, inventive orchestral sounds.

The same might be said, at least when Jurowski conducts it, of Rachmaninov’s Symphony No 3. From the ideal balance of clarinet, horn and cello in the opening phrases, this was a performance of exquisite detail, not vulgar as the symphony can be, and the LPO responded with its finest playing. The bond between the orchestra and its former principal conductor, now conductor emeritus, seems as watertight as ever. This concert will be available online at Marquee.tv from February 5.

★★★★★

One of the brightest deeds of the lockdown was the “LIVE from London” online choral concerts masterminded by the VOCES8 Foundation. The series worked so well that it has spawned successors, and “LIVE from London — Christmas 2021” is now under way. There are 13 concerts through to January 6, reaching a climax with five programmes of Bach’s festive cantatas from the Gabrieli Consort.

A couple of guest choirs from the US have been invited, and the first of those, The Crossing, is already online, filmed at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. This professional chamber choir, led by Donald Nally, is dedicated to new music. The recent American works in its programme entitled “Returning”, the choir’s first since lockdown, are serious and inventive, not immediately memorable, but they do show how excellent this choir is at meeting a range of contemporary challenges. Alongside, Tavener’s Funeral Ikos and Esenvalds’ Earth Teach Me Quiet offer balm to the ear.

★★★☆☆

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