Audition: Stravinsky – Petrushka - London Philharmonic Orchestra/ Vladimir Jurowski

Audition: Stravinsky – Petrushka (version 1911)

London Philharmonic Orchestra/ Vladimir Jurowski

Recorded live at the Royal Festival Hall, 2014 on the orchestra's own label

One wonders if Stravinsky's music is still as popular as it was with the current wave of Russian conductors.  Stravinsky was a familiar composer on record and in the concert hall in the last hundred years.  He was widely admired and as his works were championed by the likes of Boulez, Bernstein and the like we've come to realise the value of his early works deeply woven in voices seeped in Russian classical tradition.  But after Paris and America wooed by him, there's become an almost apologetic trickle of his major works beyond the handful of ballets.  With such diffidence we are due a new champion of Stravinsky's works? 

So it's sad to say we have another Russian hotshot and another no-show. Jurowski presents Petrushka  without the full blooded excitement of others and in this live recording so we get flubs, weird balances and a few podium and audience noises. 

The LPO plays well though not as well as it did for Haitink in his first recording. Jurowski is fine in the intimate moments but not across all of the bigger canvases. That said he does spot many details that others don’t. But this is not enough, he skimps elsewhere – the recording and conductor fail to give us the whole score. The playing is good though the players feel to me like they want to go faster and louder.

Most grievous, Petruska’s treatment in the final pages is perfunctory and unceremonious. I wonder how much more telling this would have been in a studio.

Perhaps it’s best in the second tableaux elsewhere Jurowski misses the big prizes. It is sad sluggish telling of the fairy tale - no sense that this is one of a high point of dance, music, drama. And if it's not clear enough, no ambiguity. It definitely ends with a dead puppet.

Performance 7 out of 10

Recording 7 out of 10,

Interpretation 5 out of 10