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J. C. Bach, Mozart: Piotr Anderszewski (piano/director), Christopher George (director), Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, 19. 3.2009 (SRT) 

J. C. Bach: Overture, Lucio Silla

Mozart: Piano Concerto in B flat, K 456

            Divertimento in E flar, K 113

            Piano Concerto in C minor, K 491


Piotr Anderszewski has been making a lot of waves recently, many of them with the SCO, and it is good to see him back in Edinburgh.  He has recorded Mozart with the orchestra before and he is about to take this programme on tour with them to Eastern Europe.  In the two Mozart concertos his piano playing was better than his directing.  There was much careful pointing of the phrasing in the B flat concerto and there was some lovely string tone in evidence.  However, his direction was a bit heavy handed in the G minor slow movement, making it feel heavy and overblown for the theme in this set of variations.  The piano tempered the mood once it entered, and there was much more subtlety and orchestral delicacy from the second variation onwards.  Anderszewski’s glittering playing brought panache to the first movement cadenza, setting the exuberant right next to the melancholy, and there was plenty of Mozartian delicacy in the sprightly finale, though the best moment was the plunge into B minor which suggested real depth and seriousness.  Of course there was seriousness aplenty in the C minor concerto.  This craggy masterpiece saw the orchestra on its best form with a real sense of scale and dignity about the proceedings, helped by the natural trumpets and timpani.  The headlong rush of the final bars was really arresting, while the gorgeous stillness of the slow movement served all the more effectively as the work’s tranquil centrepiece.   Maddeningly, however, this coincided with the appearance of a most irritating electrical buzz in the hall which wrecked the most peaceful moments.  No-one’s fault, perhaps, but still appalling.

The smaller scale works were played with consummate skill and musicianship.  Both are predominantly string works but they had fabulous moments for the winds too. The Overture to J C Bach’s Lucio Silla, his opera seria of that name, is really a three-part sinfonia.  The first and last movements chug away energetically, while the slow movement features a very enticing oboe solo.  K 113 was Mozart’s first divertimento, probably written as background music for an outdoor entertainment.  It was played with vigour and energy with a nice rasp to the natural horns and gorgeous tone from the pair of clarinets, especially in the serenade-like slow movement.  The ever-talented leader, Christopher George, directed with understated skill from his chair, but playing like this showed the orchestra moving and breathing as one.  I would question the ordering of the works, however, as they necessitated not one but two momentum-sapping interludes where the piano had to be moved into place.  The evening felt a little longer because of that, not because of the great music-making.

Simon Thompson


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