LSO Uchida Davis Barbican 26 May 2011

Haydn, Beethoven, Nielsen: Mitsuko Uchida (piano), London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Colin Davis (conductor), Barbican Hall, London, 26.5.11

Haydn: Symphony No.99

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No.2

Nielsen: Symphony No.6

Colin Davis has been conducting Haydn symphonies since long before anybody was taking the idea the idea of period performance seriously. Those (paradoxically) new ideas about how to perform the music stand in opposition to a long and vibrant tradition, which retains all its vitality under Davis' baton. He doesn't intervene too much in the flow of the music, his role is more to energise and inspire. And even though the string section is relatively large, the results are impressively nimble. Ensemble and tuning were occasional problems, especially in the strings. When Davis spurs them on to loud dynamics that are out of their comfort zone, both the tone and the coordination can suffer.

When it comes to working with soloists, there are distinct advantages to working with the very best. The ensemble problems in the strings continued into the opening tutti of the Beethoven concerto, but when Mitsuko Uchida entered everything changed. From then on the orchestra was note perfect, and the perfection continued after her departure to elevate the Nielsen performance considerably above the Haydn. Do we have Uchida to thank? Who knows, but her performance was certainly inspiring. I hadn't heard her perform much Beethoven before, and I had wondered if she would have the necessary weight for his strident textures. But Uchida has a knack of setting the agenda on her own terms. As soon as she began, it became clear that I had been asking all the wrong questions. Instead, the issue became whether Beethoven has the required subtly and sophistication for an Uchida performance. He does, of course, and her performance was as convincing as any. She makes impressive musical capital out of questioning Beethoven's certainties. In the first movement in particular, many of the piano phrases seem to be written as dogmatic statements. But Uchida presents them more as suggestions, as if to say "Is this what the piano should be doing here?" And of course it is, but as a listener you feel that your views have been taken on board, or at least your presence has been acknowledged. Her performance wasn't note-perfect by any means, there were a good deal of wrong notes, and she got seriously lost a few bars into the first movement cadenza. But none of that detracted from this incredible performance.

Even by Nielsen's own standards, his Sixth Symphony is an eccentric work. There is nothing you can take for granted here, with the form, the orchestration and the harmony continually taking unpredictable turns into the unknown. There is enough great writing, especially in the first movement to compensate for its many wanton eccentricities. Most of those eccentricities come in the inner movements, and the second in particular gives the uneasy impression that it is all a big joke at the listener's expense. Full credit though to Colin Davis for tackling this and Nielsen's other symphonies so late in his career. They all require clear and focussed musical direction, and they certainly get it. This Sixth in particular is a work that presents huge challenges to everybody on the podium and particularly the conductor. The players had obviously done their homework too, because the orchestral playing here was ideal – precise, coordinated and focussed, and without any trace of pedantry, nor, I should add, of resentment at the bizarre challenges to which they were being put, often for only obscure musical gains.

No doubt a recording of this performance of the Sixth Symphony will find its way onto the LSO Live label, and given the quality of the playing it could well turn out to be as good as any on the market. The concert is being repeated on 2 June (with Uchida playing Beethoven's First Concerto). That concert will be broadcast live on Radio 3. Do tune in, but don't worry if you're not in time to catch the Haydn.

Gavin Dixon

RPO Beethoven Night Zukerman 11 May 2011

Beethoven: Pinchas Zukerman (violin and conductor), Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, RFH, London, 11.5.11

Beethoven: Egmont Overture

Beethoven: Violin Concerto

Beethoven: Symphony No.5

In all my years of concert going in London, this was the first time I had heard the RPO live. Bizarrely, I hadn't heard Beethoven 5 live either, although of course, I have enjoyed a long (and occasionally passionate) relationship with both the orchestra and the symphony on record.

RPO concerts, at least on the strength of this one experience, aren't like concerts by other London orchestras. The audience is older but more enthusiastic. Of course, with an all-Beethoven programme, what's not to like? They seemed to be equally passionate about Pinchas Zukerman, and both his conducting and his playing occasioned almost apoplectic applause.

So much for the audience, what was the performance like? To be honest, I didn't think much of it. Beethoven sits at the fault line of the standard repertoire; every earlier composer has been more or less appropriated by the period performance movement, while later composers are still firmly in the symphony orchestra repertoire. But both make equal claims to Beethoven. Mutual influence can make that advantageous for both parties, with the period instrument ensembles moving towards more dramatic performances and the symphony orchestras refining what they do with Beethoven's scores.

Not the RPO though, they are still performing Beethoven as if it where Mahler, with a huge string section, and everything played out in grand sweeping gestures. There are one or two advantages to this approach, Beethoven's orchestrations really benefit from the contributions of a double bass section of twelve players. But the playing of the whole orchestra lacked precision, and Beethoven's nimble rhythms were often bogged down just by the sheer weight of the ensemble.

The opening of Egmont was an indicator of what was ahead. The sinister chords of the opening passage were presented with all the corners rounded off. The rest of the overture was certainly weighty, but hardly incisive. The orchestra played with passion but lacked precision, not in their tuning, that was generally OK, but in their ensemble was approximate at best.

After the overture, the podium was quickly moved from the stage, and Zukerman returned with his violin to both play and conduct the Beethoven concerto. The concert was clearly all about Zukerman, his bio in the programme ran to three pages, about six times as much as most soloists or conductors usually get. While he is a relative newcomer to conducting, it is the violin he is best known for. Again, I wasn't particularly impressed with the results. Many concertos can be played fine with the soloist directing the ensemble, and I'm sure there is precedent with this one, but much is lost in the process. The orchestra really needs somebody to shape the phrases, especially in the slow movement, and without one they are reduced to mere backing. Zukerman performs the piece with a gritty, strident tone, which certainly competes with the volume of the orchestra but isn't very pretty. He delivers the phrases in an assertive and deliberate manner, his brow furrowed in concentration and his gaze fixed on the floor. True enough, Beethoven's concerto is one of the heavier in the violin's repertoire, but it needs some lightness and grace as well.

The finale fared better than the first two movements. Zukerman's muscular bowing worked to the benefit of the strong downbeats of the main theme, allowing him to clearly articulate its shape. And the orchestra responded well to his playing here, balancing the weight of these refrains with some real delicacy (at last!) in the quieter interludes.

Zukerman conducted Beethoven's Fifth from a score, which surprised me, especially as he seemed to know it well enough not to need the text. The performance was a mixed bag. To his credit, he didn't exaggerate any of the gestures in the outside movements, keeping the tempos steady and giving just enough dynamic contrast to articulate their structure. But both the opening movement and the finale suffered from some fatal longueurs, with the energy dropping to such and extent in the quieter passages that it often proved almost impossible to revive.

The inner movements worked better. There was an endearing gentleness about the second movement, with both the conductor and orchestra apparently content to allow the variations to gradually play out, one after the other. The third movement too was presented without undue histrionics. In fact, it went too far the other way, and could have done with more drama and punch.

But despite my own reservations, the audience again went wild at the end of the symphony. There are different Beethovens for different audiences I suppose, and Pinchas Zukerman delivers the kind of Beethoven that these listeners respond to. Even so, a little more precision, clarity and interpretive focus would go a long way, and I suspect make this a more satisfying experience for everybody involved.

Gavin Dixon

Not All String Quartets Are The Same: An Interview With The Ligeti Quartet

The Ligeti Quartet are very rare breed, a young quartet who specialise in contemporary music. Gavin Dixon meets up with them to hear about getting to grips with the toughest music in the repertoire, performing at some unusual venues, and what to pick from the menu when you're eating Japanese.

Photo: Gianluca de Girolamo

When young professional musicians are difficult to track down, that's usually a good sign. The players of the Ligeti Quartet seem to be as busy as any, and it took a good few weeks before we found a time that we could all meet up for an interview. In the end, we decided on late-night meal at a Japanese restaurant after what sounded like a strenuous three-hour rehearsal.

They had been working on a new piece with the Columbian composer Camilo Andrés Méndez San Juan. It sounded like he had been working them hard, but by the end minds were starting to wander.

Richard Jones, the group's viola player tells me "Val [Welbanks the cellist] decided what she was going to have over the course of our rehearsal just now, she kept leaning across and saying "I'm definitely going to have soup". Then ten minutes later it was ginger chicken. Is it still ginger chicken?" And indeed it is. That sounds like a good recommendation so I order the same, udon noodles with ginger chicken. Delicious!

After some detailed discussion of the menu, the conversation turns to music. They are an unusual group; it is rare enough to find a string quartet that specialises in new music, but a young quartet who have their sights set on the most difficult of modern repertoire is all but unheard of. I ask how the group got together, and it turns out to be more complicated than expected. There were a few random meetings and shared gigs here and there, where the players got to know each other. The world of contemporary chamber music is, it seems, a small one, so like minded players are inevitably going to meet.

"Something that brought us together" Richard tells me "was the First String Quartet by Gabriel Prokofiev. He asked us to play it in Oxford. That was the first time we had worked solidly together towards something. That was about a year ago."

Gabriel Prokofiev (Sergei's grandson) is himself a bright young thing on the contemporary classical music circuit, and his music draws on all sorts of influences. His "NONCLASSICAL" club nights are the antithesis of the traditional chamber recital format. Playing in new and interesting settings is an integral part of what the Ligeti Quartet is all about, but his composition is at the more accessible end of the contemporary music spectrum. I ask if the style of his music has dictated the later course of the quartet's activities, and I'm certainly expecting the answer to be "No", given the name they have chosen for themselves.

"We don't want to be pigeon-holed" says Mandhira de Saram, who plays first violin. Val agrees "We don't want to be limited to playing one kind of music." But there is one kind of music that is definitely at the centre of what the do, the modernist repertoire that poses the most difficult technical challenges a chamber performer can face. And those challenges are clearly what get these players going.

"When we do something like the Gubaidulina Third quartet, we feel a real sense of achievement when we play that to an audience and they get something out of it." True enough, Gubaidulina's Third Quartet is a pretty full-on modernist work, but it's not the toughest piece they played, and it becomes clear listening to the discussion of the new piece they have been practising this evening that it is harder still.

However, all four players are keen to stress that their concerts are more than just a contest with the notes, and prospective audience members should be reassured to hear that difficult modernist works only make up one part of their stylistically diverse programmes.

Patrick Dawkins, the second violin player tells me "We want to involve audiences as much as possible and be accessible in everything we do. We don't want to play, for example, a concert of incredibly complex music just for the sake of it." So their repertoire stretches from the gritty modernists, via one or two more established 20^th century names like Kodaly and Ravel, all the way to the minimalism of Reich and Glass.

That brings me round to the group's promising name. How, I ask, did they come to be known as the Ligeti Quartet?

None of the players is quite sure which of them came up with the idea, but the reason for it is clear. Richard says "We were unanimously enthusiastic about learning the Ligeti Quartets, so it seemed like a good name." They have already performed his early Andante and Allegretto (classic Ligeti, I'm told, as conservative as Communist Hungary required, but with premonitions of the distinctive style of his later years), and the First String Quartet is scheduled for the end of June.

So what about the Second Quartet? If ever there was a piece with a fearsome reputation it is this. The première of the work in the early 60s had to be repeatedly postponed because it took the players over a year to learn all the passages with artificial harmonics. This, I suspect, is the reason it hasn't yet made an appearance on this group's programmes. But no, I'm quite wrong, and questions about the Second Quartet don't phase them at all. They are learning the Ligeti quartets in chronological order, and will turn their attentions to the Second towards the end of the year.

That's not to say that they need the help of any composer to do what they do. Improvisation is becoming an increasingly important part of the Ligeti Quartet's activities. At one recent event, at the October Gallery near Russell Square, players from the quartet performed a series of free improvisations inspired by the paintings of Kenji Yoshida. Improvising in this sort of context is, I suggest, a very different activity from performing the works of contemporary composers.

"Not necessarily" says Val "it is about confidence and knowing that, even though one of us might start doing something different, the others can take up the new idea and then go with it."

"Improvising is not that different from normal quartet playing" according to Richard "When you are playing from music, there is a huge amount you do with it that is spontaneous, or that should be. You can't plan a lot of the things that end up happening, so I don't think it is a huge step to go towards improvising."

It turns out that improvisations based on paintings are just one of the ways in which the quartet work with other art forms. They have a concert coming up in September where the ceramicist Marisol Jacquemot will be presenting work inspired by their programme. Collaborations with singers and dancers are also planned, including the première of a new chamber opera at this year's Brighton Festival.

The relationship between visual arts and music brings us round to the question of performance venues. It is clear from the quartet's programme of upcoming events that they do not limit their activities to concert hall and traditional chamber concert settings.

Patrick tells me "The venue is really important, because that is something that can put people off contemporary music. You hear a lot of discussion about why contemporary art is so popular at the moment compared to contemporary music, and I'm sure it is to do with the setting. The concert hall can be an intimidating environment for many people."

Val takes up the theme "Contemporary music is like contemporary art in that how the audience takes it in depends a lot on the setting. You can have a fantastic piece of contemporary art outside and it will be really effective, but you put it in the sterile environment of a museum and it loses its effect. And the traditional concert setting can be much the same."

Audiences seeking a relaxed and friendly atmosphere to hear some new music are likely to find exactly that at the Red Hedgehog in Highgate where the quartet are about to take up a residency. The venue takes its name from Brahms' favourite coffee house, and the idea is to recreate the conviviality and artistic milieu of 19^th century Vienna.

"It's a great little chamber music venue" Mandhira enthuses "very intimate. Works like Gubaidulina's Third Quartet and Camilo's piece are really intimate pieces, and it is nice to be able to play really pianissimo."

"And when everyone is so close" continues Richard "they can see the action and the interaction. With much contemporary music, like the Gubaidulina, it is all about the interaction between the players, so it is great when the audience can see that going on."

Clearly, the Reg Hedgehog is the ideal venue to hear the Ligeti Quaret. Their next concerts at the venue are scheduled for 15 May, 17 July and 25 September. Each event takes place on a Sunday afternoon, and lasts around an hour. To find out about these, and about the quartet's many other upcoming appearances, check out their website: http://www.ligetiquartet.com

Unsuk Chin Total Immersion Day

Total Immersion: Unsuk Chin
BBC SO, Barbican, London 9.4.11

My first thought when I heard about this day dedicated to the music of Unsuk Chin was that it is about time British audiences got a chance to hear the music of a composer that the Germans have been raving about for years. But on consulting the programme, it seems I am out of the loop; every piece bar one had been played in the UK before. There was one London première and one 'London public première' suggesting that I have just been mixing in the wrong circles and if you know the right people, Chin's music is easily accessible.

For those less privileged, Unsuk Chin is a name that only really relates to Proms programmes, but from those it is clear that she is a major talent with impressive contacts with top class players. The other fact about Chin that rarely goes unstated is that she studied with Ligeti. Apparently their personal relationship was stormy, but all relationships with Ligeti were stormy so that's not necessarily significant. It is tempting to define her music purely through comparison with the great Hungarian master. That would do her a disservice, but his unique soundworld clearly haunts her musical psyche. Like Ligeti, she is drawn to nonsense lyrics and (not coincidentally) also to Lewis Carroll. Her piano etudes (of which we heard two) are a direct continuation of her teacher's. More significantly, textures and effects that are clearly Ligeti trademarks keep turning up in her scores. So, for example, the conclusion of Kala is made up of unsynchronised descending scales in the choir over a sustained pedal in the woodwind – just like the Kyrie from Ligeti's Requiem, Acrostic Wordplay combines phonetic sounds from the vocal soloist with erratic ensemble textures (Aventures), in the Violin Concerto, the harpsichord suddenly bursts in with what sounds like a quotation from Continuum, and in Su (the sheng concerto) there is a point where all the percussionists put down their sticks and start playing harmonicas, just like in Sippal, Dobbel...

But with the exception of these alarming calls from beyond the grave, Chin has a distinctive voice. She is not as regimented as Ligeti, and prefers messy textures – more clouds than clocks. Like Ligeti she writes acoustic music that is informed by prior experiences in the electronic studio, but unlike Ligeti, those experiences also produced electronic works worth listening to. It is difficult to categorise Chin's work in terms of ethnicity or gender, except to say that there is an intrinsic sense of outsideness that prevents her from taking anything in Western Classical culture too seriously.

The day began at the Guildhall School, with a talk from Jonathan Cross and performances by pianist Claire Hammond and violinist Jenna Sherry. Hammond had planned to perform all six of the Etudes, but illness last week prevented here from preparing more than two. So we got a double performance of Double Bind? for violin and electronics instead. It is a fascinating work, which in this interpretation involves the guts from the remote control of a Wii strapped to the bottom of the violin so that the electronic devices can track its movement. Listening to it twice demonstrated how every performance is different in terms of the dynamic and synchronisation of the live electronics. Sadly, it turned out in the talk later on that the composer gets very distressed by that variability and it is one of the reasons she does not work with live electronics on a regular basis.

The London Sinfonietta gave a lunchtime concert that consisted of Gougalon, Acrostic Wordplay and the Double Concerto (only the name borrowed from Ligeti in this case). Gougalon relates to Chin's first and recent visit to China and is almost narrative in its structure and tone painting. Acrostic Wordplay is the piece that made her famous, a song cycle for soprano and ensemble. I think the comparison with Ligeti's Aventures is fair, but this is much gentler music, and perhaps the composer's oriental background shows through in her reluctance to push contrasts or extremes. The Double Concerto for piano and percussion shows this even more clearly. Chin said in the talk later on that she is not very interested in the standard orchestra (when she was asked what standard orchestration was she replied 'Brahms') which was why she always adds so much percussion. Yet she is commissioned to write orchestral music so that is what happens. Similarly, I think, with her many concertos, written at the behest of willing and able collaborators, and not out of any loyalty to the genre. So the relationship between the soloists and the ensemble is not her starting point when it comes to concertos, basically they are all in it together. In the Double Concerto, there is a percussion soloist and a percussionist in the ensemble, but both seem to do about the same amount. All excellently played under Unsuk Chin specialist Stefan Asbury, and with competent soloists. I couldn’t help wondering, though, what is in it for them, all of whom are expected to play exceptionally difficult solo parts, but without any bravura or show.

The screening of the Alice in Wonderland was one of the most insightful aspects of the day, and while it is (as yet) the composer's only opera, it is clearly a statement of intent. The score is powerful and seems energised by the sheer absurdity of the text. Chin sets the story in a surprisingly literal way. The surrealism of the staging is at odds with the basically narrative structure of the music, a disparity explained by the fact that this first production was designed and directed by the Brecht protégé Achim Freyer. Unsuk Chin said that she had initially been shocked by the liberties taken by the director, but now that she has seen a second, more literal, production, she has realised how good the original is. Perhaps the most radical aspect of the show was the filming for video by Ellen Fellman. Freyer positions Alice at the centre of a large square tableau and leaves her there for the entire opera. Obviously, just locking off a camera at the back of the stalls would make for uninteresting viewing, so instead Fellman introduces a range of camera techniques – handheld, moving in and out of focus, splitscreen...It's all very effective and fully in keeping with the spirit of the production. The film is available on DVD (Unitel A0501647) and is well worth a look.

Like the lunchtime concert, the evening event by the BBC SO succeeded largely because of the excellent choice of conductor, the incomparable Ilan Volkov. I had despaired of every seeing him on the London stage again after the news broke of his move to Iceland. But he to is a Chin specialist and is a conductor who really cares about new music, ensuring that any performance under his command is well rehearsed and coordinated.

The event must have been a logistical nightmare for the BBC. Chin's scores require so much percussion that the stage had to be extended forward about six metres. This blocked the fire escapes in the stalls and meant that a large proportion of the audience had to sit upstairs. And two twenty minute intervals were needed to move the percussion instruments around between works. Each time it was worth the wait, but it meant the concert went on until almost 11.

The first piece, Kala is essentially a cantata. The music is interesting and never overly complicated. As much as anything else, the score shows the composer's facility not only with writing for large orchestra, but also choir and soloists. It was a good performance, although neither of the solo singers excelled, probably because the bass was a last minute stand in (sorry, didn't catch the name) and the soprano, Sarah Tynan, is pregnant.

The next piece was Chin's Violin Concerto, for which she won the Grawemeyer Prize. To be honest, I couldn't see what all the fuss was about. It is slightly closer to the traditional concerto model than most of her other works in the genre, it is in movements for example. But it is yet another example of a concertante work where the soloist sweats buckets but to no appreciable effect. There are some interesting orchestral effects, but that's not what a violin concerto should be about.

Rocana is Chin's first work for orchestra without soloist, giving a much better excuse for her to explore the potential of the large orchestra. She gave herself (or perhaps her commission gave her) a good twenty minutes to explore all her various ideas around, in this case, the idea of light. The expansive format really works for Chin's music, and it also avoids the frustration of watching a soloist who you can't really hear.

By rights, the final work, Su, a sheng concerto, ought to have been the worst culprit for inaudible solo playing. But no, the orchestration is done very sensitively, and as Chin explained, she wanted the orchestra to act like another sheng. (A sheng, by the way, is a kind of Chinese mouth organ with bamboo pipes arranged vertically.) The soloist was Wu Wei, who played an instrument of his own design, with complex keywork around the pipes to make it fully chromatic. The piece is a triumph, and was the ideal conclusion to the day, genuinely new and interesting, and suggesting all sorts of allegories of East-meets-West by which to neatly summarise the work of this unique composer.

Angela Hewitt, Festival Hall, 29.3.11

Bach: Partita No.1 in Bb BWV825

Beethoven: Fifteen Variations and a Fugue on an Original Theme in E flat Op.35 (Eroica)

Handel: Suite No.8 in F minor for keyboard HWV433

Brahms: 25 Variations and Fuge on a theme by G F Handel Op.24

Angela Hewitt's demeanour seems at odds with the scale of a Festival Hall solo recital. She modestly takes the stage but is greeted with a rock star welcome, and her graceful relationship with the piano keyboard seems more appropriate to the drawing room than the concert hall. She is a professional, of course, so she is more than capable of living up to the star billing. She is also able to project right tot the back of the hall, while giving everybody present the feeling she is playing just for them.

The programme was well chosen to play to her strengths, particularly that combination she achieves of simplicity of style combined with depth of emotion. That comes across best in the fast contrapuntal music that looks mechanical on paper but which she can mould through infinitely subtle dynamic gradation. The Gigue from the Bach 1^st Partita is a case in point, as is the finale of the Eroica Variations and just about everything in the Handel 8^th Suite. The programme does two of the composers – Beethoven and Brahms – fewer favours, and they both have far better works to their names, although something tells me their reputations are unlikely to suffer.

For listeners like myself who automatically associate the Bach Partitas with the almost neurotic interpretations of Glenn Gould, Angela Hewitt is a breath of fresh air. For Hewitt, the elegance of the music's surface is just as important as what lies beneath. That's not to say that there is no depth here, but rather that she doesn't need to introduce any angst into this music to give it its full emotional impact. Given the clarity of line that typifies her Bach, her playing style is often surprisingly legato. She often gives the impression that her brain is half a beat or so ahead of her hands by making it seem like she is rushing scale or sequence passages. It's all an illusion though; everything is exactly on the beat.

The artistic integrity of Hewitt's approach is demonstrated by the fact that nobody every questions her ambivalence to historical performance practice issues. Her Bach and Handel interpretations rely heavily on long hairpins, which in music written for the harpsichord is absurd. There is plenty of pedalling here too. And then in the Beethoven and Brahms, we are presented with dainty and elegant performances of music by composer/pianists who were anything but. None of this matters, of course, in fact, it only goes to strengthen her Bach. It is an unwritten rule that as a pianist you have to mould Bach's music into your own image, so the more liberties Hewitt takes the stronger her readings become.

Even so, her style is all about subtlety. In the Brahms and the Beethoven, you often get the feeling that the composers are relying on simple oppositions of dynamic or tempo between successive variations to articulate the form. But Hewitt won't let then off that lightly, and insists on continuity across longer spans. This allows her to build up to fairly dramatic climaxes, or wind down to wonderfully tranquil interludes, yet without resorting to extreme dynamics at either end of the spectrum.

She and her Fazioli piano make a great pairing. Where did the RFH get that piano ? I'm sure they usually have a Steinway. Perhaps she brought it with her. It's not as strident as the Steinway though, and it responds beautifully to her touch. Up till tonight, I'd only been familiar with Hewitt's work through recordings, but it is a real delight to watch her fingers literally dancing across the keys. And that playful touch, combined with the roundness of the piano's tone, adds up to a sound that both Beethoven and Brahms would probably have related to, a sound reminiscent of the more intimate voicings of Viennese pianos of the mid 19^th century.

Great as Hewitt's Bach undoubtedly is, the real revelation of this recital for me was the Handel 8^th Suite. Handel's Italian counterpoint is even more closely matched to Hewitt's style than Bach's more Gothic constructions. In the Handel, each of the melodic lines always has a light, melodic feel, and Hewitt is able to make each of them sing, even with three or four voices going on at once. This too is music that a pianist must mould in their own style, and as with the Bach, Hewitt uses every trick in the book: pedalling, gradual dynamic shifts, lingering cadential cadences. But it is done with such subtlety and taste that it is difficult to find fault.

A wonderful concert and a life affirming experience. Angela Hewitt is justly famous for her impressive catalogue of recordings, but live she is even better still.

Gavin Dixon

BRSO Uchida Jansons Beethoven Strauss

Beethoven, Strauss: Mitsuko Uchida (piano), Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Mariss Jansons (conductor), Royal Festival Hall, London, 25.3.11 (Gdn)

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No.3 in C minor Op.37

Strauss: Ein Heldenleben Op.40

With the possible exception of their colleagues in Cologne, the BRSO are the only radio orchestra in the world who can guarantee to fill a concert hall when they tour. Being a radio orchestra, every step of their history is available for public scrutiny through their copious recordings. But even by their high standards, their recent track record is extraordinary. Mariss Jansons is a conductor who now only works with the world's finest orchestras, but he is somehow able to raise even the highest standards. He is at home in the German orchestral system; the Bavarians give him plenty of rehearsal time but expect world class results. And they get them, time and time again.

But all this is a matter of public record, and UK audiences can find it out for themselves by purchasing any of the BRSO recordings that have recently been released on their own BR Klassik. label. Does hearing them in the flesh live up to the expectations those exceptional recordings create? The answer is a resounding yes. This is a seriously good orchestra, and Jansons is a conductor who will only tackle a work if he has a real vision for how he can make something special with it.

The high standard of the performance was helped by the choice of soloist, Mitsuko Uchida is a rare commodity on the London concert stage, so every appearance is to be savoured. On the face of it, Beethoven's Third Concerto would seem like an unusual choice for her. It's music associated with heavy-handed masculine performers, heroically battling against the forces of the orchestra. But Uchida demonstrates that it needn't be like that. She brings subtly and refinement to every phrase. Her playing has a wonderful coherence, with the melodic line creating a stream of consciousness, with the audience hanging on her every note. That allows her to bring out salient details without them interrupting the flow of the music, curious offbeat accents for example, or exchanges between the hands, where brief motifs at the top of the keyboard are mirrored at the bottom. She also has an amazing ability to take everything down to the quietest imaginable dynamics while still retaining the music's symphonic breadth. It wasn't a perfect performance by any means, there was a glaring wrong note towards the end of the slow movement, and she has a tendency to loose the last half octave or so of runs on the way up to thematic statements. But these are trivial details, and the performance as a whole was a revelation, achieving that mythical status in with the Classical repertoire or a performance that allows you to feel that you've never heard the music before.

By contrast, however well you play Ein Heldenleben it is always going to feel like it has baggage. It is a shame that Jansons chose this work for the orchestra's London visit, as its flabby structure is hardly the vehicle to demonstrate his mastery of large-scale form. Still, at least he didn't bring a Mahler symphony. But for all my reservations about the work, the performance itself was exemplary. The orchestra had already shown what they could do in the Beethoven, with some seriously tight ensemble and a sensitivity to stylistic concerns that brought them about as close as you can get to period performance on modern instruments. The Strauss benefited from all sorts of wonderful attributes that these players could bring. The string section doesn't quite have that chocolaty lushness of the Berlin or Vienna Philharmonics, but their unity of ensemble is almost as good. The woodwind have some really distinctive colours, and the communication between Jansons and his woodwind soloists is something that conductors of London orchestras can only dream of. The low brass are powerful yet controlled, some nice calf-skin sounds from the timpani, and the quality of the horn section is out of this world.

Jansons took a fairly measured approach to the gargantuan score. He treated each of its six sections as if they were individual symphonic movements, each with its own character, tempo and internal logic. He had plenty of fireworks up his sleeve for the battle scene and the other tutti sections. But it was the quieter passages that made this performance really special, the places were he could show off the colours of his woodwinds, or where the communication within the orchestra could be demonstrated though, for example, the interplay of violins and tenor and bass tuba.

Those recent recordings don't lie, this is a world-class orchestra at the very top of their game. London audiences can't really complain about the quantity and standard of what they are presented on a regular basis, but even so, it would be nice to hear this ensemble more often than we do.

Messiaen Bruckner LSO Rattle 7 March 2011

Messiaen, Bruckner: London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Simon Rattle (conductor), Barbican Hall, London, 7.3.1

Messiaen: Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum

Bruckner: Symphony No. 9 in D minor

London audiences got a Brucey bonus this evening from Sir Simon Rattle. Having spent the last two weeks here on a residency with the Berlin Philharmonic, he stayed on for a one-off appearance with the LSO. And much as Rattle has moulded the Berlin ensemble to his own artistic aims over the last eleven years, so the Philharmonic has left its mark on him. His efforts to drag the ensemble into the 20^th century (let alone the 21^st) usually involve programming something fairly modern with one of the three Bs. So it was this evening with a first half of acerbic Messiaen tempered by some more digestible Bruckner after the interval.

Rattle is a big fan of Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum; I've heard him conduct it at least once before in London, and possibly even twice. I can't say I share his taste, but the logic behind programming it for this concert is reasonable enough. It is a work that shows off the skills of the LSO's famous woodwind, brass and percussion sections. It is also a good primer for Bruckner 9, sharing as they do a great deal of spiritual and theological (although not aesthetic) common ground. It was given an impressive reading this evening. Despite first appearances, the work is not devoid of sentiment and grace, and in the quieter passages, the woodwind solos in particular, Rattle sculpts the music and creates moments of real beauty. He is also conscious of the work's ritualistic dimension, and in many of the more dour movements he stood before the players, solemnly articulating the beat as if he were officiating at some divine observance.

If I've one complaint, and it is quite a prosaic one, it is that it was just too damned loud. The huge percussion section includes three tam tams, and while Messiaen no doubt encourages the maximum possible volume here, in the small space of the Barbican Hall, it's just too much.

I was hoping for a revelation with Rattle's Bruckner, as I've never been to a performance of a Bruckner symphony with a British conductor that was any good. Perhaps Rattle found himself up against similar prejudices when he first went to Berlin, and listening to this, I could well imagine him standing there all those years ago in front of the Philharmonic and realising that he would have to make his mark. I have my reservations about the interpretation he gave us this evening, but it was certainly distinctive, and there were a number of details where he was clearly making sure his presence was felt. In the first two movements, for example, he added accelerandos to the gradual crescendos in the build ups to climaxes. The result was that the climaxes where often very fast; exciting but hardly monumental. In the first movement, Rattle prioritises melodic continuity over architectural structuring. So there are no pauses between the phrases, but the phrases themselves, especially in the strings, are all elegantly shaped.

The orchestra played well, but not as well as they do for Gergiev. There were some surprising technical problems in the first few minutes. In the build up to the first climax, the wind got ahead of the strings by about half a beat, not something you'd expect from this orchestra. The brass playing was a mixed bag, and the trumpets in particular struggled to maintain the elegance of their tone at the louder dynamics. This could have been something to do with the fact that Philip Cobb, their young star player, was relegated to bumper. It was easy to share his frustration (which he did well to hide) as he sat there in silence listening to the less than impressive sounds coming from his more senior colleagues.

But as with the Messiaen, there were some surprising moments of intimacy in the Bruckner. Some of the quieter passages in the development of the first movement were brought down to a whisper, and the elegance of the string sound served Rattle's purposes well. That was also the saving grace of the Adagio, that feeling in the quieter passages that all the ritual and bombast had been left behind and the that the simple string or woodwind melodies could simply sing out without having to express the weight of their structural significance.

For all his communication with the orchestra, which was obviously intense and immediate, Rattle made sure that he remained the focus of this Bruckner. His interventions in the tempos deprived the work of some of its monumentality, but the pay-off, such as it was, was in the freshness and vitality he brought to some of the individual quieter passages.

Or perhaps I'm being too harsh. I think it is fair to say that, as a general rule, any live performance of Bruckner, like any live performance of Wagner, is destined to fall short of the ideal model you have of the work in your head – unless of course it is conducted by Bernard Haitink. Fortunately, then, the LSO has had the good sense to book Haitink for a performance of Bruckner's Fourth Symphony next month, and the Seventh in June. This evening wasn't bad, but those concerts promise Bruckner interpretation of a completely different order.