CityLife

BBC Philharmonic: Mozart, Shostakovich

BBC Philharmonic
Bridgewater Hall
May 7, 2010

It doesn’t take a mathematical genius to see that the 7pm start time for the BBC Philharmonic’s Friday concerts in Manchester has not caught on with audiences.

The last of them in the 2009-10 season gathered a very small crowd – but since they’re live on radio anyway, it could simply be that people decide to listen at home instead of turning up.

But Günther Herbig is such a brilliant conductor that any performance with him in charge is an experience. This time he had Shostakovich’s fourth symphony to offer, and he did not disappoint.

Neither did Shai Wosner, the soloist in Mozart’s piano concerto no. 21 (K467). He may be young, but he has got Mozart sussed, and gave a masterclass in style, with little flourishes here and there and tasteful decoration of the melody of the slow movement as it progressed.

His first movement cadenza (his own, he confided in answer to admiring questions at the interval) was a delight, too, playfully working on the movement’s themes and introducing a few snatches from The Marriage Of Figaro as a bonus. There’s good precedent for that sort of thing – Stephen Heller famously brought in bits of Don Giovanni in a cadenza to the Mozart double concerto played with Hallé here in 1862.

Herbig and the Philharmonic, led by Yuri Torchinsky, were attentive and cleanly precise in their role through almost every section of the concerto.

The Shostakovich symphony is not an easy listen, but was worth the effort in Herbig’s reading, as he caught all its anger and gloom without losing sight of the essential musicality of the writing. There was drama in the slow movement, and powerful realisation of its spooky close and of the lugubriously clownish humour alongside grimness in the finale.

Herbig was both meticulous and inspirational, and the Philharmonic’s wind players were outstanding in their solos.

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