Philharmonia Orchestra (cond. Tugan Sokhiev); Arcadi Volodos, piano
Due to inclement weather and aftermath of illness, I left this concert at the interval, thus missing Shostakovich (not a hardship for me!): my focus was the Brahms concerto and it didn't disappoint.
Arcadi Volodos's performance of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto #3 at the Proms, in 1997, electrified me: it was viscerally affecting in a way that I'd never experienced with Beethoven, Mozart etc. Obviously a lot of that affect was down to Rachmaninoff, but Volodos' interpretation played its part. ('played', hahaha.)
He's considerably older and more ... successful, but he hasn't lost that touch. His performance was gripping, albeit on occasion so delicate as to be almost inaudible (we were in the choir, on the 'wrong' side of the piano, and I'm certain the inaudibility was due to our position). Because I know one particular recording (Stephen Hough's) by heart, even a split-second hesitation felt like (but wasn't) a mistake -- and engaged me with the music, the ebb and flow and crash and whisper of it, all over again.
One of the things I really love about Brahms' piano concertos is the way it's piano versus orchestra. The Philharmonia were far from being backing music for this piano extravaganza: there's almost as much glorious textured melody and rhythm in the orchestral part as in the piano. Particular kudos to the brass section (as usual), and to the orchestra as a whole for managing to conceal from me the fact that there was no percussion at all: that is, it was loud and rhythmic and forceful without a single kettledrum. So there, Herr Beethoven.
This is the concerto with the bells in it: reading the programme notes about Brahms in ecstasies over Italian cathedrals, I've amended my mental context slightly.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
