Music
St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra
Usher Hall, Edinburgh
Keith Bruce
four stars
ON the way to my seat, I was greeted by venue manager Karl Chapman, a man with a smile on his face that only a packed house could produce. A visit by the St Petersburg Phil is a pinnacle in the hall’s international orchestra season, and the Usher Hall audience clearly likes the Sunday afternoon experience.
Only an orchestra of the history and reputation of this one could replace an indisposed octogenarian chief conductor (Yuri Temirkanov) with a deputising musician of the calibre of Vassily Sinaisky, ten years his junior. Undoubtedly we heard a very different concert.
For Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto, the conductor positioned himself in close proximity to soloist Freddy Kempf, with his back turned to his second violins and violas, as the pair combined on an interpretation with some bold phrasing and very fluid tempi.
Kempf’s measured way with the opening crescendo set out the approach and the sprint finale to the first movement was followed by a very slow, legato statement of that famous tune from Brief Encounter on clarinet.
The last piano note had barely died away when Sinaisky started the Allegro finale, which ended in a way that seemed utterly fresh.
Sinaisky may have opted for a podium to direct Mahler’s Symphony No.4, but that intimate approach to the prettiest of Mahler’s symphonies was still present.
The orchestra may be modest by the composer’s standards, but it still had ten basses and four flutes, yet it was the quiet moments that had the most impact. Just as the balance between Kempf and the orchestra had been spot on in the concerto, so soprano Anna Devin – not a familiar face in Scotland – was perfectly placed in the ensemble sound here, while orchestra leader Lev Klychkov showed his gypsy side in his solos.
The slow movement of the Fourth is like a genial big brother of the one in the Fifth, and was indeed “Ruhevoll” (restful) here, but there was a Wagnerian tension in Sinaisky’s transition into the Finale. The full house allowed a blessed pause after the last harp note before the tumultuous applause.
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