LSO/Zhang – review

Barbican, LondonBad timing was, on occasion, an important factor in Prokofiev's career, and Xian Zhang's concert with the LSO presented us with two works notably affected by it. The lyrical First Violin Concerto dates from 1916-17, though at its Paris premiere in 1923 it was considered insufficiently avant-garde, while Soviet critics also subsequently deemed it insufficiently revolutionary.The oratorio Ivan the Terrible, meanwhile, draws on the soundtrack Prokofiev composed for Eisenstein's vas...

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