CityLife

Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra: Rachmaninov, Shostakovich

Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra
Bridgewater Hall
March 1, 2010

It was the biggest army of orchestral players on the Bridgewater Hall platform that Manchester is likely to see this season outside the Mahler symphonies cycle - and what an orchestra!

The Netherlands Radio Philharmonic visited on the first date of a UK tour, with their chief conductor Jaap van Zweden and Macedonian pianist Simon Trpčeski. With well over 100 musicians on stage, it was an opportunity to hear one of Europe's finest in music that could have been chosen to display their qualities.

Trpčeski's playing of Rachmaninov's first concerto - a tricky piece, because it verges on sentimentality and bombast - was virtuosic but calculated, as well as may be, to give coherence to it. He had power in reserve for a cadenza that became the highspot of the first movement, but more impressive was his gentle, plangent exposition of the slow one.

That was created against a lovely cushion of string tone which is one of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic's greatest assets. Another is its brass ensemble, which, if telling in the Rachmaninov finale, was all the more effective in Shostakovich afterwards.

Trpčeski balanced his virtuosity in Rachmaninov with a sweet encore in the shape of Chopin's little Waltz in A minor - an apt tribute.

Jaap van Zweden's contribution included both rhetorical impact and clarity of articulation, qualities which were also to the fore in the 'Leningrad' symphony (Shostakovich's seventh).

Like Rachmaninov's, it's not a flawless work but one which is still compelling listening. Van Zweden knew what he wanted to get from it - drama and overwhelming effect in its climactic passages, and beauty in its melodic solos.

The gradual crescendo from near-inaudibility to crashing brutality in the famous 12-times repeated march tune of the first movement was one of his best achievements, but he drew an almost equally vast dynamic range from the second movement, also vividly realised.

There was expressiveness where it was most needed (in parts of the Adagio), and a firm hand keeping things on the move in what is a sprawling structure at the best of times. The central part of the finale lost focus somewhat, but the final pages were superbly sustained and awesomely climactic.

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