meldehautbois
I wish I saw this concert! Hamlet has one of the best oboe solos ever written :-)

Paul Davis
P Orth, imposing his own absolute judgement proves as "wrong" & "irresponsible" as those he flays. Having adored Prok2 and heard all possible performances since the 60's,my own feeling was of dismay. Possibly, younger,Toradze's ideas had originality but now lurch from messiness to disaster within his limited range. The grotesque is already in the score, it shouldn't be in the player. However, I heard the broadcast and wouldn't deny the excitement of a live occasion for many in the hall, especially those 1st-time-hearers, and admittedly,a "circus-act" pianist does pull the crowd, so...BUT NOT FOR ME!

P.S. Kinnison
Both Prokofiev works - Piano Concerto No.2 and Symphony 7 - along with Tchaikovsky's'Romeo and Juliet' would have made this a great Prom on their own but for me, Gergiev and the LSO's performance of the too infrequently heard 'Hamlet' made this the best and most unmissable concert of the season; what expressive and moving playing for Ophelia's oboe theme - and I was transported by the love theme which follows it... Maybe Gergiev and the LSO have helped to redress the balance which has seen Tchaikovsky's view of the Prince of Denmark overshadowed by our greater familiarity with his star-crossed Veronese lovers? Anyway, I don't expect to hear a more dramatic and committed Hamlet for quite some time; even so, there's no excuse for other conductors not to programme the piece.

PDH Roberts
I thought this performance quite dreadful.Too slow,innacurate,with sprinkled szforzani quite ill placed.I much preferred the wonderful interpretations of kissin and luganski.

Barry Marsh
Several English composers have set 'Romeo and Juliet' - Edward German, and Constant Lambert.

David
I hardly ever listen to classical music and have not before heard the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 2, so this is very much an uninformed review. All I can say is that I was completely in awe of this performance. I found the energy of the pianist to be simply stunning and it has left me thinking that I am certainly missing out by not listening to more classical music. If that is one of the aims of the proms, then this performance has hit the mark.

Adrian
I just listened to Romeo And Juliet in Slovakia via internet (artists, Proms & BBC 3 - thanks!). What an interesting choice from the London Symphony, to engage Valery Gergiev as Principal Conductor. He certainly is a great professional, his work at Kirov was amazing. I saw him conducting in Austria once: he lead the orchestra - in my opinion - with a kind of "dark" energy (I mean it in no way negatively!) and his gestures were quite "illegible". The tempo proportions in Romeo and Juliet I liked very much, I even enjoyed the frenetic tempo with the dramatic offbeat stabs. They just missed one important thing: they were not "together enough", in the woodwinds the outcoming tone quality was sometimes 2nd rate, as I heard it.The LSO is with no doubt on worldwide scale a top orchestra - for me especially because of their precise rythmical feeling. I missed that "togetherness"at some points quite unexpectedly - in Romeo and Juliet... I wish the LSO and Valery Gergiev all the best, may their cooperation be humanly and musically inspiring! (-:

James Dixon
Perhaps surprisingly, Prokofiev was the star of this show. Wonderful melodies and performances apart, and sacreligious as it may be to say it, Tchaikovsky's gushing romanticism has never seemed to me quite right for 'Romeo and Juliet'. An Italian story immortalized by an English playwright surely needs a lighter touch, which the crisper Prokofiev gave it in his ballet score. How bizarre that no English composer ever set this story, but then the narrative symphonic poem is an ungainly form. Stories are hard to follow without study of the score, and even then often vanish into chunks of purely musical 'glue'. Much more satisfying was the purely abstract world of the two Prokofiev works. It is bizarre that the Second Concerto has taken the best part of a century to catch on. It really is one of the great Russian concerti, balancing Prokofiev's sweet and sour sides to perfection. The Seventh Smyphony was a revelation to me. This is some of the composer's most gently contemplative music. Writing for children tapped a stream of sincere lyricism in him which released intimate thoughts on many more adult subjects. The opening string theme spoke with unparalleled sincerity of love, old age, retreat, Russian skies. However there are still deliciously Prokofian booby traps to enjoy! The second movement's nursery games were whipped up by Gergiev into a maelstrom of gaudy menace. in the coda a clock tick-tocks mockingly over a consoling wind theme, but at (literally!) the last second, melody and mortality bond in a single elfin pizzicato note. Is this the two sides of Prokofiev's character finally bonding? Could be, but this is a symphony into which one can always hear new things: the hallmark of truly great music.

Barry Marsh
Well said Peter. And the two 'unfortunates' with Petroc also traded quite a few insults about Gergiev as well.

Ursula
In all my experience of Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Overture, I have never encountered a performance so rushed and generally messy as this one. The fantastic offbeat stabs which characterise the end of the main theme, and are one of the most ingenious and distinctive features of the piece, sounded almost panicked at this frenetic tempo, with the orchestra struggling to coordinate the rushing semiquavers in the strings with the cymbal crashes at the back. The diminuendo necessary to bring out the lyrical second theme in the wind provided temporary relief, before chaos hit again in the recapitulation. Reactions of proms audiences are often very telling; the fairly restrained applause was, I'm sure, due in part to the fact that the piece was over almost before it had begun!To programme a second, and undoubtedly lesser, Tchaikovsky overture following the wild abandon of the Prokofiev proved to be an ill-thought-out decision. The rather flat and predictable melodies of 'Hamlet' show Tchaikovsky at his least pioneering, and introduced the second half with a lapse in energy which the final symphony, with its meandering structure and fragmentation, failed to entirely dissipate. Having revelled in the sensitivity and nuanced tone of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in their stunning interpretation of Mahler 3 a few weeks ago, I was disappointed to see the LSO fall by the wayside, failing to bring out the contrasts in a similarly problematic symphony.

Orpheus
Valery Gergiev is on record as saying that he likes working with Alexander Toradze because of that pianist's willingness to be different to others. But on this showing, that desire to be different had crossed into the category of perversity and grotesquerie in Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No.2. It was the slowest performance I have ever heard, replete with brutal sforzandi and pulling about of rhythms which sounded more as if technical rather than purely musical considerations were in Toradze's mind. And that impression was reinforced when the mis-hits came flying in the big cadenza, even at such a ponderous tempo. Toradze's playing was the epitome of the proverbial Russian bear, heavy and brutal, with hardly any lightness of touch or grace to offset the karate chops elsewhere. Gergiev seemed to be in complete accord with his soloist, though some of the LSO players looked bemused when Toradze was making heavy weather of pummelling the keyboard.Earlier, Gergiev had conducted a lively and affectionate account of Tchaikovsky's 'Romeo and Juliet' Fantasy Overture.After the interval, there was more lightness of touch and charm, not to mention some superb woodwind playing in another Tchaikovsky Fantasy Overture based on Shakespeare, this one on Hamlet. Then Prokofiev's Symphony No.7 showed the lighter side of this composer, with melodies that would not be out of place in one of his ballet scores. Gergiev and the LSO were in their element, giving a performance full of character. The finale in particular showed just what was missing in Toradze's one-dimensional Prokofiev earlier.

Peter Orth
The Proms would be well served to re-think what sort of talent is employed as comentators. Petrok knew the truth about Toradze's performance of Prokifiev#2 - but the two so-called knowledgebles speaking with him after the performance proved an important point. Today's music climate is too much influenced by uninformed ignorance. One longs for the time when those who dare to speak about art and artists may distinguish between mediocrity and something unique as opposed to the current climate of smooth edges and lowest common denominator attraction. Mr Toradze's performance was not only original - he is a great artist who knows hows to build a structure of sound at the piano and has the tools with which to accomplish it. This was one of the most towering performances of the work in memory. The two unfortunates speaking to Petrok were not only wrong, but worse - irresponsible. It points once again to the important fact that those who can, do - those who can't - talk about it. I would'd normally waste my breath to write - but something had to be said.