RSNO: Grieg Piano Concerto
Usher Hall - 18/11/22
When I mentioned to a friend that I was going to review this concert, he made me promise not to write anything about apotheoses or the order of notes on the piano, so I won’t. Oops!
The Grieg Piano Concerto, Beethoven 7 and MacMillan’s Larghetto – what a programme this promised to be, and, my word, it didn’t fail! My neighbour in the stalls turned to me at the end, and exhilarated said, “That was the best concert this season so far”. I cannot disagree.
The beginning was inauspicious, as the publicised soloist and conductor had been substituted, due to injury and illness. I was particularly disappointed not to see Edo De Waart conducting. I sang in productions of ‘Jenufa’ and ‘Les Troyens’ with this doyen of Dutch conductors at De Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam twenty years ago and enjoyed working with him. Now 81, he is a revered conductor, and I was looking forward to seeing him again. However, as often happens, one bad thing often gives way to a good thing, and we were presented with the young American conductor, Jonathon Hayward, presently Chief Conductor of the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie and Music Director Designate of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, clearly a star of the future.
The concert began with Sir James MacMillan’s Larghetto for Orchestra, a reworking of his choral setting of the Miserere (2009), premiered in Pittsburgh in 2017. This was not just a good opening piece, but something of a revelation to me, a work of deep feeling and intensity, exhibiting a rare beauty for a modern work. Its luminous textures and affecting melodies, with contrasting brass and string sections, created a sound world of ravishing clarity and depth. Here, and in the Scottish songs I have heard twice in the last month or two, I have discerned a different quality which I had not experienced before. MacMillan’s faith is still there, and in his notes, he writes of “lament and mourning”, the “liturgical character of the music”, but I heard more of yearning and humanity, a haunting beauty which I wanted to experience again. There were great swells in the brass and allusions to plainchant, and a genuine sense of Scottish longing in its “Celtic modality”.
The Usher Hall Steinway was wheeled on for a performance of Edvard Grieg’s famous Piano Concerto in A Minor, and again a change of artist had been announced, the Russian pianist Denis Kozhukhin replacing the injured Joyce Yang. I was sorry not to hear Ms Yang, but Mr Kozhukhin was a simply superb alternative, in fact, one of the finest pianists I have ever heard. Born in Nizhni Novgorod in 1986, this young man gave a towering account of Grieg’s concerto, exhibiting power and precision from the first famous chords, and proceeding to dominate the stage throughout. Virtuosity, charisma and flamboyance all combined with a scrupulous attention to detail and a miraculous clarity of tone to deliver a performance which brought out every nuance of this wondrous score, first performed in Copenhagen in 1869. I have never heard the Usher Hall piano sound so magnificent, its tone ringing out round the hall, bringing us all Grieg’s melodies and themes, sensitively accompanied by the RSNO and Mr Heyward. It was clear that the two men had an immediate rapport, and their embrace of each other at the end exemplified this connection. After the fireworks of the great first movement, Mr Kozhukhin displayed his sensitive side in the slow movement, with bell-like clarity in the upper notes, before plunging into the thrilling last movement with its recollections of a Norwegian Halling dance (an acrobatic folk dance) and the sound of the Hardanger Fiddle, an eight or nine stringed folk violin. An ovation greeted the final chords and Mr Kozhukhin was persuaded to play a lovely encore of Grieg’s ‘To Spring’.
After the interval, the delights continued in the form of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, my personal favourite of the master’s masterworks. Mr Heyward, tall and slim with excellent conductor’s hair, proved a worthy guide to take us through this astonishing symphony, a work of such joy and exhilaration as to completely discredit the view of Beethoven as a grumpy genius. There is no doubt that the composer’s long list of ailments, in particular his deafness and what must have been depression, would have destroyed the spirits of a lesser man, but somehow, his ability to overcome his problems, and his hope for the future. despite his disillusion with Napoleon, produced works of utter joy, like ‘Fidelio’, the Seventh and, of course, the Ninth.
A friend of mine complained last week that this concert was bland and safe, and somehow not demanding enough of its audience. Do we need yet another concert of Beethoven Seven? My answer, and he grudgingly admitted it after the performance, was that there can never be too many opportunities to hear live the greatest works, especially when heard afresh conducted by new talent. That talent was in abundance in Jonathon Heyward’s conducting of the Beethoven: thrilling, inspired, balletic, moving, it had all these qualities, and he elicited superb playing from the RSNO, with particular bravos for Adrian Wilson (oboe), Helen Brew (flute) and David Hubbard (bassoon). The brass distinguished themselves, especially the horns in the last movement, and the finale prompted an outburst of cheers and whoops, rarely heard in the Usher Hall! I was sorry not to see Edo de Waart, but I hope the RSNO invite both Mr Kozhukhin and Mr Heyward back soon for their own programmes, as this was a cracker!
