SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Mozart, Mahler: Gianluca Cascioli (piano); Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Alexander Briger, with Lisa Milne (soprano). RFH, 29.3 2008 (CC)

Illness caused the advertised conductor, Mikko Frank, to pull out of this concert, and it was left to Alexander Briger to step into the breach. I have had one previous experience of Briger, when he conducted Rigoletto at ENO in February 2006. The impression he left then was not entirely satisfactory, and the first half of this Philharmonia concert did nothing to significantly raise my respect for his conducting. Only in the second half did he start to come into his own.

The concert began with a bracing Don Giovanni Overture (complete with concert ending). Hard-sticked percussion brought a bite to fortes in a performance that was fine as curtain-raiser, if largely unremarkable.

Gianluca Cascioli provided an interesting slant on Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto at the BBC Proms back in 2005 by performing the work with ornamentations by the composer discovered on an MS. On that occasion, there was what I described as 'possible nerves' at the start, and so it was here in Mozart's 23^rd Piano Concerto (except with much less of the 'possible' about it). After a middle-of-the-road orchestral exposition (Bruger's fussy conducting seemed to coax the orchestra into largely ignoring him), Cascioli literally entered with a bang. Strange, given the intimate nature of Mozart's writing at this point. A limpidly toned right-hand was then offset by an over-highlighted left. Cascioli seemed intent on languishing in Mozart's writing, leaving it to Briger to try to re-inject some vigour into the ongoing argument. Perhaps Cascioli's approach was best summed up by the cadenza, which actually almost stopped several times.

The slow six-to-a-bar, lumpily phrased opening to the Adagio from Cascioli found, once more, Briger trying to inject some sense of flow in the face of his wayward soloist. Soporific was the mot juste here; the finale, again, lost momentum at one stage. A great shame.

The Mahler Fourth Symphony was much better, despite a positively bronchial audience. If Briger underplayed the irony in Mahler's writing, he at least balanced this by demonstrating a fine knowledge of the score in a multitude of well-observed orchestrational touches. Climaxes, in particular, were finely balanced across the orchestra, not just indiscriminately loud.

Leader James Clark was lovely and spiky in the solos of the second movement. Just a pity tat the clarinet missed the grotesque edge to his solos. The orchestra played magnificently in the long slow movement, with stratospheric violins showing no sense of strain. Briger's awareness of the interplay of lines (something already in evidence in the first movement) led to a gripping exegesis of the musical argument. Only the radiance of the later stages was missed, and then only just.

The excellent Lisa Milne entered at the climax of the third movement. Her lovely voice made great, and endearing, play of dotted rhythms. She almost acted out the text (Mahler's vision of Heaven, taken from the Wunderhorn poetry of which he was so fond). At last Briger had found a musical partner rather than an adversary, and how it showed, with a true sense of transcendence in the air for the final depiction of the music of other worlds. All was forgiven.  Well, almost.

Colin Clarke

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