CityLife

The Hallé: Beethoven, Shostakovich

Halle Orchestra
Bridgewater Hall
April 22, 2010

It wasn’t announced with any fanfares, but one of the highlight concerts of Manchester’s current season has been taking place this week – in the Hallé Opus One series. In fact, you still have time to catch its last outing, which is tomorrow night.

That’s assessing it on musical quality alone – quite apart from the heroic journey made by the 86-year-old conductor, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, to get here. With all flights out of action earlier in the week, he came overland, with a team of two drivers, non-stop from Poland to make the rehearsal and first performance on Wednesday. As a former principal conductor of the Hallé, he is a man who takes loyalty very seriously.

Thursday’s repeat was, I guess, slightly more relaxed, and proved the value of bringing together two exceptional musical minds in the performance of Beethoven’s fourth piano concerto. François-Frédéric Guy was the soloist – a young man who is becoming a world phenomenon as he specialises in the Beethoven concertos and sonatas.

He’s not just thought about this concerto, which is often considered a gentle and mellifluous work, in contrast to the drama of the ‘Emperor’: he’s re-thought it, and found opportunities for drama and poetry that are often completely missed.

Skrowaczewski was with him there, and together they put it into a thrilling and fully Romantic idiom. From quite early in the opening movement Guy led the way in finding potential in its contrasts and rapidly changing textures, and, playing the long cadenza Beethoven wrote himself, brought it to a mighty climax.

The slow movement – well known for its juxtaposition of the wild and gentle – became a kind of operatic scena, full of expression, and the finale was sheer fun, as soloist and conductor threw and caught its flying fragments of theme with immense skill.

Skrowaczewski conducted Shostakovich’s 10th symphony with all the authority of one who knew its composer and his times at first hand. There was nothing stuffy about it either, as he achieved extraordinary dynamism but kept its explosiveness under constant control.

The strings, led by Paul Barritt, were rich, precise and eloquent. The full sound was very loud when it had to be, but never noisy. Skrowaczewski expounded the ‘message’ of the third movement, with the composer’s signature theme stabbed out emphatically by the flute.

Getting pace and weight right in the rejoicing of the last movement can be tricky: too light and it sounds flippant, too heavy and it seems vindictive. This was perfect – and brought its own irresistible smile.

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