It was Mahler who said a symphony must embrace the whole world. But it took Messiaen to write a symphony that does. Any performance of his testosterone-charged Turangalîla Symphony tends to obliterate everything else in its vicinity. So it was in this LSO concert. It took an effort of will afterwards to recall that the short first half contained a dazzling performance of Dutilleux's brightly coloured and tightly drawn Métaboles, his 1960s concerto for orchestra in which each movement deftly overlaps into the next before a scintillating fusion finale. Métaboles is a beautifully judged and scrupulously constructed work.
Turangalîla, by contrast, is never knowingly understated. There are those who can't get enough of Messiaen's vast and tumultuous postwar symphony, and others who feel that attending a performance is like being trapped in a wild party where everyone else is having a great time.
It was not clear which camp Gergiev belongs to. His direction, like the symphony, took time to cohere, and the opening movement, which sets out the themes that recur throughout the work's 10 movements, came over as a bit of a loud jumble. The Chant d'Amour second movement, however, was electrifying and sultry, and, with Joanna MacGregor giving an authoritative account of the solo piano part, the symphony's inner movements were irresistible. The LSO strings and Cynthia Millar's ondes martinot seized their big moment in the moody stasis of the Jardin du Sommeil d'Amour sixth movement, while the three shorter, denser, more dispassionate Turangalîla movements were all well controlled.
As with all works of artistic extravagance, Turangalîla ends more because it has to than because it has reached any obvious point of finality. Gergiev looked shattered at the close. He and the orchestra seemed pleased to have reached the finishing line.