Outside it was winter, but in Symphony Hall it was spring — there was tremendous vitality in Helmchen and Vedernikov’s Brahms.
Cool and spacious, the first bars of Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto sounded as natural as breathing. It helps to have a good acoustic. In a beautifully balanced, well-prepared and perceptive performance by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Alexander Vedernikov, the steady gleam of Elspeth Dutch’s horn solo folded in seamlessly to the pianist Martin Helmchen’s answering phrase and the poised freshness of the CBSO woodwind and strings.
Outside it was winter. In Symphony Hall it was spring. There was tremendous vitality in Helmchen and Vedernikov’s Brahms, a seductive thrust to the five-o’clock-shadow syncopations of the Allegro appassionato, neat pizzicato, oxygenated trills, limpidity, brightness, muscularity and wry humour. This is clever, sensual music, less solemn and melancholy than it first appears. Where some pianists seek to wrestle Brahms to the ground or scale his music like a mountain, Helmchen brings Beethovenian transparency and a Schumannesque half-smile, which was mirrored in Oliver Janes’s clarinet playing.
Vedernikov’s elegantly crafted selection of extracts from Prokofiev’s Cinderella showcased the plush tutti sound of the CBSO and the versatility of its principals: Janes, again, in Shawl Dance; the flautist Marie-Christine Zupancic in Cinderella Dreams of the Ball; the violinists Vesselin Gellev and Kate Suthers in the earthy tang of Dancing Lesson and Gavotte; the trumpeter Jonathan Holland and the tuba player Graham Sibley in The Prince and the Shoemakers; the double-bassist Julian Atkinson in Refreshments for the Guests.
Cinderella’s Waltz unfurled like a bolt of heavy purple velvet, while Midnight glittered with a monstrous beauty. If the cellos were overperfumed in Cinderella and the Prince and the Slow Waltz was curiously tentative, the melting, coiling figures of Amoroso were delicious. Applause is one thing. Seeing two little girls sit transfixed by Vedernikov’s orchestral fairytale is another.
Source.
Cool and spacious, the first bars of Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto sounded as natural as breathing. It helps to have a good acoustic. In a beautifully balanced, well-prepared and perceptive performance by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Alexander Vedernikov, the steady gleam of Elspeth Dutch’s horn solo folded in seamlessly to the pianist Martin Helmchen’s answering phrase and the poised freshness of the CBSO woodwind and strings.
Outside it was winter. In Symphony Hall it was spring. There was tremendous vitality in Helmchen and Vedernikov’s Brahms, a seductive thrust to the five-o’clock-shadow syncopations of the Allegro appassionato, neat pizzicato, oxygenated trills, limpidity, brightness, muscularity and wry humour. This is clever, sensual music, less solemn and melancholy than it first appears. Where some pianists seek to wrestle Brahms to the ground or scale his music like a mountain, Helmchen brings Beethovenian transparency and a Schumannesque half-smile, which was mirrored in Oliver Janes’s clarinet playing.
Vedernikov’s elegantly crafted selection of extracts from Prokofiev’s Cinderella showcased the plush tutti sound of the CBSO and the versatility of its principals: Janes, again, in Shawl Dance; the flautist Marie-Christine Zupancic in Cinderella Dreams of the Ball; the violinists Vesselin Gellev and Kate Suthers in the earthy tang of Dancing Lesson and Gavotte; the trumpeter Jonathan Holland and the tuba player Graham Sibley in The Prince and the Shoemakers; the double-bassist Julian Atkinson in Refreshments for the Guests.
Cinderella’s Waltz unfurled like a bolt of heavy purple velvet, while Midnight glittered with a monstrous beauty. If the cellos were overperfumed in Cinderella and the Prince and the Slow Waltz was curiously tentative, the melting, coiling figures of Amoroso were delicious. Applause is one thing. Seeing two little girls sit transfixed by Vedernikov’s orchestral fairytale is another.
Source.
Concert review: CBSO/ Vedernikov at Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Anna PICARD, The Times, December 8 2017
