Saint-Saens Second Piano Concerto
is a work with which Simon Trpceski is becoming increasingly identified
in this country – only a month or so ago he gave a performance of it
with the Scottish Chamber orchestra, one of almost incandescent fury
in the outer movements. If this performance, under Alexander Lazarev
and the Philharmonia Orchestra, was both more weighty, and at times
more ponderous, it still conveyed this pianist’s gift for enthralling
the listener with the most expressive legato. The opening andante, for
example, so evocative of the middle movement of Beethoven’s Emperor
concerto, produced superbly poetic playing, notably at the top end of
the keyboard where Trpceski relies on a firm, but sonorous, edge to
his finger placement.
He is equally miraculous in the
bass register – the opening toccata, for example, had a thrilling range
and depth of tone. What continues to impress with this pianist though
is his technique – octaves were as well placed as you will ever hear
in this concerto and he played the cadenza with effortless virtuosity.
If his use of rubato was perhaps slightly more extremely applied in
the first movement than I have previously heard (this was a markedly
slower performance than the one he gave with the SCO), and the allegro
uncovered the slightest hint of some misplaced fingers, it was still
a gripping journey through a concerto which in the right hands can sound
less trivial than it often is. Lazarev might not have been his ideal
accompanist, however – there was more than a little suggestion that
the conductor was impatient with his young soloist’s relatively long
pauses between movements, and at times Lazarev didn’t seem to care whether
the orchestra’s playing drowned out the soloist.
The Philharmonia’s performance
of the 1919 suite from The Firebird did not begin propitiously:
some coarse brass intonation aside, string tone was often wiry. The
real problem, however, was Lazarev’s tempi which, especially in the
‘Infernal Dance of Kashchei’, were pedantic and distorted. Dramatically,
I can rarely think of a performance that I have found less compelling
but having said that he used his hands and body to seduce from the orchestra
some fabulously well balanced dynamics. Pianissimos really were hushed
– at times almost a whisker away from inaudibility – and woodwind playing
was often characterfully drawn. ‘The Firebird’s Lullaby’ was given feather-like
delicacy and the ‘Finale’ was a mere step away from brutality.
Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances
produced the best orchestral playing of the evening – and some very
brooding string tone – but this too was a performance which didn’t really
grip the imagination. Lazarev coaxed some beautifully magical dance
rhythms during the second movement’s sinister waltz, and in the first
a compelling urgency, but the lasting impression was of a performance
that lacked that last ounce of spontaneity. If he kept the lento assai
section of the third movement liquid it had the effect of making the
allegro less enervating than it can be (despite the conductor’s bull-fighter
gestures which brought the work to its sonorous conclusion).
One odd feature of this concert
was that each of the works played lasted almost exactly as long as they
were scheduled to play in the programme notes (24, 22 and 35 minutes
respectively). And this was surely the concert’s problem – it just didn’t
seem to have enough freedom from the shackles of the stopwatch.
Marc Bridle
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