Sir Antonio Pappano began 2024 as music director of the Royal Opera and ended as chief conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. Around the middle of the year, there was a sort of retrospective; a stock-taking, if you like, as he made the transition to this third act of his career. Warner Classics released a box set of Pappano’s recordings with the Santa Cecilia Orchestra in Rome, where he held the top job from 2005 to 2023. And Pappano published a memoir, My Life in Music – a masterclass in diplomacy. No beans were spilled, and they were never likely to be. You don’t survive 22 years in an international opera house without learning discretion; not, that is, if you intend to remain sane.
You don’t survive 22 years in an international opera house without learning discretion
Pappano seems eminently sane. It’s been a volatile two decades at the LSO, which hasn’t had a really stable relationship with a chief conductor since Sir Colin Davis stood down in 2006. After the psychodrama of the (now memory-holed) Gergiev years and the frustrated hopes of Simon Rattle’s tenure, it’s easy to see the appeal of a trooper like Sir Tony. A safe pair of hands? Your words, not mine. But Pappano presumably understands the deal – you’ll play in the Barbican and lump it – and no one imagines for a second that he’s going to start, say, endorsing Vladimir Putin, or succumbing to late-onset Brexit Derangement Syndrome.
Still, this is Pappano’s first UK symphony orchestra, so it’s reasonable to wonder what to expect. His book and discography offer encouraging clues. He began as an opera house répétiteur and learned on the job – the old-school kapellmeister career path of Erich Kleiber and Bruno Walter. There’s a boyish glee in his description of the moment when he was offered his Rome orchestra (‘A symphony orchestra! A dream come true’) and that same enthusiasm – a smiling, sunny tone and an exuberant forward sweep – carries over into his Roman discography. Repertoire-wise, he’s enjoyably eclectic. Pappano is surely the only incumbent of the Royal Opera House to have recorded the theme from the 1975 soft-porn flick Emmanuelle 2.
In his final LSO concert of 2024, he gave us the whole package. A few days earlier he’d conducted Arnold Bax’s Tintagel and Vaughan Williams’s Ninth Symphony, but this was clearly conceived as more of a Christmas treat: Gershwin, Bernstein (the Prelude, Fugue and Riffs – raw, propulsive and laced with neat Stravinsky) and Duke Ellington’s transcription of the Nutcracker Suite. There was an oddity, too – the Fourth Piano Concerto by the Russian composer Nikolai Kapustin, who died in 2020. ‘Soviet jazz’ is the usual summary of Kapustin’s style, though ‘Glazunov with blue-notes’ might be a better description. The soloist, Frank Dupree, bounced perkily up and down the keyboard while the strings noodled cocktail harmonies and a drum kit (played by Obi Jenne) applied rhythmic jump-leads whenever Kapustin started to meander, which was quite often.
Well, not everything has to be profound. The audience enjoyed it and so did I, at least with these performers. Like Rattle, Pappano clearly adores the sound of a big orchestra; unlike Rattle, he’s a broad brush man rather than a pointillist. But those brushstrokes are shapely, purposeful and loaded with colour. Everything glows, everything speaks, and the combination of transparency (all those years accompanying singers have clearly paid off) and glossy, silken richness reminded me of John Wilson’s Sinfonia of London.
So the strings swooned luxuriantly in Gershwin’s Girl Crazy overture, and the LSO brass principals floated their Ellington solos like cigar smoke before snapping back into big-band lockstep. Jazz fans always grumble that classical musicians can’t swing – but who’s counting when it sounds as succulent as this? London orchestral programmes are generally staid, and with the exception of Jurowski at the LPO, it’s been decades since a conductor-orchestra partnership in the capital has generated anything like the electricity – the agenda-setting buzz – of Elder in Manchester, Petrenko in Liverpool, Karabits in Bournemouth, or Nelsons and Grazinyte-Tyla in Birmingham. It’s early days at the Barbican but here’s hoping that Pappano continues to let his freak flag fly.
Just a quick note to say that Mike Leigh’s multicoloured production of The Pirates of Penzance is back at ENO and that it’s as fresh as ever. The abstract sets frame the story as if it’s a comic strip, throwing the focus on to character and singing, and in this revival (directed by Sarah Tipple) both are tip-top. William Morgan is a positively Mozartian Frederic, and Isabelle Peters, as Mabel, is as effervescent as spring water. If Richard Suart (Major-General Stanley) is no longer as agile, vocally, as he once was – at least on a stage as big as the Coliseum – the warmth that this legendary Savoyard generates from co-stars and audience alike is unmistakable. Summer sunshine in this greyest of winters.
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