Prague Symphony Orchestra. Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham. 11 February 2025,

5☆☆☆☆☆.  Review: William Ruff.

“Vivid orchestral storytelling and astonishing piano fireworks.”

The Prague Symphony Orchestra proved that you don’t need words and pictures to tell a good story.  Music can do it perfectly well by itself…and when it comes to a supernatural tale, the results can be even scarier, as in Dvorak’s tone poem The Noonday Witch with which they opened their concert.

Its about a mother trying to do the household chores whilst her little boy refuses to play nicely with his toys.  When he starts throwing them around, she threatens him (unwisely) with the Noonday Witch (whose working hours are 11 – 12).  When the witch appears, the mother regrets her rash words and in a fight between witch and mother for possession of the boy, he is killed. When father comes home for his lunch he discovers his dead child…and we hear the Witch cackling with demonic glee.

The Prague SO, under their conductor Tomáš Brauner clearly relished all the opportunities for vivid scene painting, such as when the orchestra depicted the entry of the Witch.  It was a wonderfully goosebumpy moment: the slowly pulsating, chromatic harmony, the sinister melody for bass clarinet and bassoon (typical of excellent wind playing throughout) and nervously trembling cellos and basses.

The concert’s two big Russian works concert also tell stories but their narratives are more about the lives of their composers.  The Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero was the astonishing soloist in Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No 3.  It’s a brilliant work, full of keyboard fireworks and rapid lurches from one mood to another.  Prokofiev originally wrote it for himself to perform – and he had a reputation for pianistic wizardry to maintain.  Gabriela Montero met all the superhuman demands with breath-taking aplomb.  Her articulation was dazzling, making even the most difficult passages in the finale sound (and look) effortless. 

It’s hard to hear Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony without thinking of the composer writing it literally to save his life.  He was in trouble with the Stalin regime and expected to be ‘disappeared’ at any moment.  The Prague musicians captured the work’s ambiguities, its ironies and searing intensity.  Two highlights: the third movement which the Prague Symphony Orchestra made the emotional heart of the symphony, surely a sort of requiem for the victims of Soviet repression, no matter what the composer told the authorities.  And the finale: not so much about the triumph of Communism but a noisy (even violent) portrait of mass coercion – the sort of ‘victory’ which masks the real despair and defiance lying underneath.

On a much lighter note, I must mention Gabriela Montero’s encore.  After the dazzling Prokofiev she invited the audience to suggest a melody that she could improvise on.  Someone offered the extremely apt formula of Nottingham = Torvill and Dean = Ravel’s Bolero. What she produced amazed and delighted her listeners.  This was a superb concert: you really couldn’t ask for more.

Prague Symphony Orchestra: Tomáš Brauner (conductor), Gabriela Montero (piano)