Brahms' Piano Concerto No 2 Reviews

The Herald
Michael Tumelty
30 January 2012
****

We will just have to live with our imaginings of what Brahms’s colossal Second Piano Concerto might have been like on Friday night with the mighty pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard. The silly man cut his finger (fast scales or chopping carrots?) and last Monday left the SCO with a conundrum. Many things can be achieved with a stookie on your finger: Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto is not among them. At the 11th hour principal conductor Robin Ticciati called in his chum Tom Poster, a competition winner and an in-demand firebrand pianist who has worked with them before, to take over from the wounded star.

So it was a young man’s Brahms Two, lean and virile, with a daredevil, somewhat flamboyant approach from Poster that left orchestra and soloist not always precisely in sync. But the heavenly slow movement, graced by a complete absence of wallowing and blessed by the sublime, song-like, extended solos of principal cellist David Watkins, lifted the music to the highest plane.

Otherwise it was a classic SCO/Ticciati night, stamped with meticulous preparation and stupendous organisation, featuring a broad, thought-through account of Haydn’s Philosopher Symphony that was characterised by some gloriously-shaped dynamics, and an utterly enthralling performance of Ligeti’s Chamber Concerto where you would swear, through instinct and experience, that the intimate details of the composer’s most dense sound clouds were individually polished and layered.

Supported by Dunard Fund.