BBCSSO, 01/12/2016

Rachmaninoff : The Isle of the Dead
Mozart : Piano Concerto No. 12, K. 414 (Cédric Tiberghien, piano)
Tchaikovsky : Symphony No. 5

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Matthias Pintscher

The Isle of the Dead is a magnificently brooding piece, with its unsettling five-in-a-bar meter, and the sombre colours of the scoring.  It's an extraordinary response to an image, and given full measure by Pintscher and the BBC SSO tonight.  The full weight of the brass did sometimes drown out the strings a little, but overall this was a very powerful interpretation of one of Rachmaninoff's best pieces.

K. 414 is the central concerto of a set of three which Mozart authorised for performance in a reduced version for piano quintet, and I've heard the chamber version far more often than the orchestral one over the last decade or so, to the point that I'd almost forgotten what it sounded like with a full complement of strings and the small wind contingent.  Quite aside from the greatly reduced sound of the chamber version, "period" performance practice has also slimmed down orchestral sound in Mozart generally, whereas this, by contrast, had an quasi-Romantic lushness to it, a fullness of timbre that is unusual to hear these days in this repertoire, though not unwelcome.  The smiling charm of the piece shone through, as did the elegance of Tiberghien's playing, though I did feel he over-pedals just a little, at least for Mozart.

If the Mozart could take a fuller, more expansive reading, though, the Tchaikovsky symphony suffered from something similar.  While I could follow the logic of Pintscher's approach, his very flexible and very broad (not to say slow) tempi made quite a lot of the 5th Symphony heavy going, particularly the 1st movement.  There was some fine string playing, big, expansive melodic lines well exploited, particularly in the 2nd movement, but at the same time the famous horn melody was slow almost to the point of coming to a halt, as were the introductions to the outer movements, and the Waltz lacked momentum.  That lack of impetus was an overall problem, only somewhat rectified by the last movement, where some energy finally appeared to provide a fairly rousing conclusion.  It was not enough, however, to rescue an otherwise rather turgid reading.

[Next: 3rd December]