Schumann’s Genoveva is one of those overtures that doesn't get out much, always severed from the opera it opens. A shame perhaps, since invested with the life the London Symphony Orchestra breathed into it, a rising theatre curtain should ideally follow. We had more Schumann though in the form of his Piano Concerto in A minor, with soloist Dame Mitsuko Uchida. No artist is ever given a warmer welcome in London than she is, and from the first sighting of her entrance the applause was loud and long. Of course, she usually justifies it when she plays, and so it was here.
The first movement hung fire at times, the steady tempo perhaps inhibiting spontaneous-sounding playing, though everything was in its place. There were exquisite clarinet and oboe solos, and a fine poetic cadenza. For the repetitions of the naive tiptoeing theme of the gentle slow movement, Uchida found more nuance, and the cello section especially was warm in tone and phrasing. The vivacious finale was best of all: each episode, even the stirringly played fugato, harnessed to the broad onward course by Sir Simon Rattle’s shrewd conducting. Uchida’s responsiveness often brought a chamber music feeling to the proceedings. The large audience-cum-fan-club were duly impressed.
Rachmaninov added that Schumann concerto to his concert repertoire late in his career, playing it just twice in his penultimate season, so there is no recording alas. But by then he had completed his Third Symphony and recorded it with the Philadelphia Orchestra. His score certainly gives the conductor plenty to do (Rattle used his during the performance), and much of the music assumes a virtuoso orchestra. So it is a natural fit with the LSO, whose recordings of it with Previn and Gergiev endure.