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tamaranthReview @ ArtsDesk.com
Philharmonia, Mikhail Pletnev: piano, Nikolai Lugansky
Shostakovich - Festival Overture
Rachmaninoff - Piano Concerto #1 in F sharp minor
Rachmaninoff - Symphony #2 in E minor
The Shostakovich is humorous and playful and martial -- doesn't capture me at all despite Pletnev's obvious enjoyment.
Rachmaninoff hadn't quite got the hang of piano concertos when he wrote the first one. (I'm not clear whether this was the original version or the heavily-revised 1917 version.) Lots of splendid phrases and promising crescendos but they didn't seem to fit together. Less distinctively Rachmaninoff at the beginning, very Romantic: then it got hectic, fabulous modulations (like Brahms!)
Lugansky's playing bright and crisp and precise but he seemed too ... formal? cool? detached?
Rachmaninoff Symphony #2: I've never really got the hang of the symphonies but this was delightful. The acoustics were weird and wonderful, the xylophone apparently somewhere above and behind me! And the music's perfect Rachmaninoff: cold and clear and Russian, moments that sound like Piano Concerto #3, moments that remind me of Spartacus. The 4th movement is marvellous: raucous, hectic, then resolving to fugue in a descending carillon, every instrument fitting together.
For this I missed fireworks, but it was worth it.
Philharmonia, Mikhail Pletnev: piano, Nikolai Lugansky
Shostakovich - Festival Overture
Rachmaninoff - Piano Concerto #1 in F sharp minor
Rachmaninoff - Symphony #2 in E minor
The Shostakovich is humorous and playful and martial -- doesn't capture me at all despite Pletnev's obvious enjoyment.
Rachmaninoff hadn't quite got the hang of piano concertos when he wrote the first one. (I'm not clear whether this was the original version or the heavily-revised 1917 version.) Lots of splendid phrases and promising crescendos but they didn't seem to fit together. Less distinctively Rachmaninoff at the beginning, very Romantic: then it got hectic, fabulous modulations (like Brahms!)
Lugansky's playing bright and crisp and precise but he seemed too ... formal? cool? detached?
Rachmaninoff Symphony #2: I've never really got the hang of the symphonies but this was delightful. The acoustics were weird and wonderful, the xylophone apparently somewhere above and behind me! And the music's perfect Rachmaninoff: cold and clear and Russian, moments that sound like Piano Concerto #3, moments that remind me of Spartacus. The 4th movement is marvellous: raucous, hectic, then resolving to fugue in a descending carillon, every instrument fitting together.
For this I missed fireworks, but it was worth it.
