Prokofiev, often sardonic in speech as well as in music, gave an invincible reason for wanting his ballet Romeo and Juliet to have a happy ending: “Living people can dance but dead people cannot dance lying down.”

Luckily, literary outrage won out over choregraphic pragmatism and this lyrical and impassioned score, with the usual tragic finale, has proved one of Prokofiev’s most persuasive.

The LSO gave two performances, on Friday and last night, of the full work as part of their Émigré Series. Valery Gergiev, the orchestra’s chief conductor, names Prokofiev among his favourite composers, championing the inexhaustible riches of the symphonies, piano concertos and stage works with different ensembles in Moscow, New York and London.

For those of us less susceptible, Romeo and Juliet, written in the late 1930s when the composer returned to the Soviet Union after years of exile, is the masterpiece of choice: glittering, aurally spectacular with a huge orchestra including saxophone, off-stage band, army of brass, double harps, mandolin, organ, piano and celesta.

Prokofiev’s genius is to create the most vivid orchestral colour: often you cannot work out how he’s achieved it unless you go back to check in the score. The string writing, including a brief solo quartet, frenzied scherzos and mysterious hushed, wide-spaced chords, is both fiendish and exacting in detail. Every main theme returns in new clothes: inverted, reshaped, transported.

Mawkish, jaunty bassoon, depicting Mercutio the joker, and glistening, radiant trumpet were the most conspicuous of the many solos; all the LSO principals excelled, energetically supported by the entire orchestra.

This is music of bold emotion and high drama, rather than the deepest feeling. You need Tchaikovsky for that. But as an orchestral showpiece, it dazzles.
Next in series, 27 January, Bartok’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, 020 7638 8891.