It’s an enormous pleasure to find the Royal Festival
Hall filled to capacity on a Sunday afternoon. Perhaps with artists
of such quality as Chailly, Repin and the Concertgebouw billed, one
should not be surprised, yet this was no easy-listening teatime programme.
The curiously attractive music of Dutchman Keuris
(Tristan Keuris, 1946 - 1996) began the concert. Three Preludes
for Orchestra, a shimmering atmospheric work influenced by an eclectic
selection of styles from French impressionism to Mahler and Schönberg,
demonstrated the Concertgebouw’s subtlety as an ensemble. Keuris’ many
different textures were brilliantly defined and contrasted; chattering
piccolo-glockenspiel passages juxtaposed against magical sustained chords
dissolving to nothing at the final conclusion.
It would not be an overstatement to describe Vadim
Repin’s account of Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No.1 in
A minor Op 77/99 as some of the most outstanding live violin playing
this reviewer has ever heard. His piercing, focused sound – played with
incredibly precise yet natural bow control - might have been too emotionally
detached for some ears, but he captured exactly the intensity and struggle
that Shostakovich’s concerto demands. Within the outer tonal strength
of Repin’s sound there was always a beautifully delicate vulnerability,
encapsulated by his silky lyricism. Throughout, the Concertgebouw and
Riccardo Chailly remained completely at one with the soloist, sympathetic
to every nuance.
Chailly’s selection of excerpts from Prokofiev’s
Romeo and Juliet Op.64 was another exciting and immaculate, if
not electrifying, performance. Again, the Concertgebouw triumphed in
its quest for contrast – although it is admittedly not difficult to
find more different movements than the charming Morning Dance, Scene
et al, and the infamously frenetic Death of Tybalt. Another conductor
might have eked more poignancy out of the three deathbed scenes, but
this was more than compensated for by the superlative sound of the string
section, speaking as one as they finally faded away.
Simon Hewitt Jones
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