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One last quick plug for the next Kensington Symphony Orchestra concert. It's going to be good. And it'll have programme notes written by me, which are better than the sort of rubbish you usually see. More on that later.

There are none so deaf as those that will not hear

So, as part of my quest to find things to do that might enable me to chuck in the day job, I'm writing programme notes for the next (GRATUITOUS PLUG ALERT) Kensington Symphony Orchestra concert , and I find myself thinking and reading about and listening to Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony. And what strikes me about a lot of the sources I've read is how they all seem to peddle the line that this is a happy work, with no sign of the turmoil of the times (it was written during the Second World War).

Now, maybe I'm going out on a limb here, but it seems obvious to me that this is a deeply ambiguous work, steeped in suggestions that not all is well (and, I suspect, not necessarily in relation to the war). Double meanings in the arts were endemic in Stalin's Russia, and that's what I hear in the ferocious bombast of much of this symphony. I expect to read positivist guff in "official" soviet articles and the like, but what about all those who've written the books, sleeve notes etc since? How can they seriously write that this is a piece that ends happily? Have any of them actually listened to it?

Prom 59: Tchaikovsky/Prokofiev (RAH)

It seems almost inconceivable that there could be any such thing as a little heard piece by Tchaikovsky, but that was exactly what we had here: his Hamlet Overture, which began the second half of the concert. It's cut from very much the same cloth as his considerably less unheard Romeo and Juliet Overture, which opened the show, and it would be nice to hear it again, if a few concert programmers might want to think beyond the blindingly obvious every now and again.

The main meat in this concert by the LSO and their principal conductor, the hardest working man in show business Valery Gergiev, was two works by a more recent Russian composer, Prokofiev. His Second Piano Concerto is a behemoth of a piece, and finds the composer in full-on enfant terrible mode. You need a big personality to stand up to this piece, and fortunately we had one in the form of the wonderful Alexander Toradze. I've seen him play this and other concertos before, and he's mesmerising to watch; a great bear of a man whose gesticulations as he prepares to attack the keyboard are an extraordinary sight, and who, when he's not playing (not that that happens often in this particular piece) turns round and pays keen attention to what the orchestra are doing. Entertaining as this eccentric stage presence is, it'd be nothing if he didn't have the musical intelligence to back it up, and he certainly does: there's a fierce intelligence to his playing, as well as an emotional depth, and a variety of touch that stretches from the most delicate playing to a full-on assault on the instrument. An extraordinary performer in an extraordinary piece, he receives rapturous applause at the end of this marathon, although strangely he suddenly seems to come over rather shy at this point, and I'm suddenly struck with a sense that he feels unhappy with his performance. I suppose it must be difficult to feel satisfied when your standards are this high.

Prokofiev's Seventh Symphony is at the other end of the spectrum. A product of the end of his life, it's tuneful and lush occasionally to the point of blandness, hardly recognisable as the same composer who wrote the concerto. It's partly a reworking of ballet music, and that's reflected in its simplicity: themes tend to be repeated rather than developed, and sometimes the material seems a bit thinly spread. By the end of his life when he wrote it, Prokofiev was a broken man, both in body and spirit, and what redeems the symphony is the palpable sense of this; beneath its surface sheen of divertimento atmosphere and lush yet oddly pale orchestration there's an overwhelming sadness suffusing it. Prokofiev later wrote an alternative, "upbeat" ending which sounds as tacked on as it is. Gergiev and the LSO eschewed this in favour of the original, which winds down to a wistful, heartbreaking close.