On the surface not much links the fifth and final complete piano concerto which Beethoven wrote (sketches for a sixth in D major date from 1815) and a symphonic suite detailing the narrative talents of an ace storyteller named Scheherazade. Both, however, require a combination of the virtuosic and the poetic. In this London Philharmonic Orchestra concert both the soloist, Tom Borrow, and the conductor, Tianyi Lu, were making their debuts at the RFH.
Borrow has already been making waves elsewhere, but I confess to being rather underwhelmed by his reading of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 5 in E flat major. His tone at the start of the work was rather steel-edged, married to a preference for staccato over legato, and he never quite suggested a powerful and leonine presence at the keyboard. Come the central Adagio, in which grave strings introduced a much darker mood, his sound became more crystalline and poised so that individual notes sparkled against the accompaniment. Here too his tendency to favour the treble over the bass register meant that the range of the musical argument was somewhat limited. If you were looking for instances of poetry, this is where you were most likely to find them.
It's certainly possible to play Beethoven in an undemonstrative and even self-effacing manner, and Borrow’s sensitive collaboration with the woodwind soloists was apparent throughout, yet this composer always has molten lava running through his veins. Take out the fire and passion, and understate the gnarly strength in the main theme of the Finale, and you run the risk of having as your salon companion what Germans call a Stubentiger, a perfectly behaved house cat, with no hissing or spitting, and no claws extended. I found Borrow’s encore, Rachmaninov’s famous G minor Prelude, much more engaging and full of the essential spirit missing earlier.
Lu had already delivered a lean and lithe accompaniment for Borrow in the concerto, grounded on just four double basses. She is an elfin-like presence on the podium who immediately commanded attention in all kinds of ways. First, unlike so many of her generation, she is not merely a time-beater but actively shapes the music with her hands, dispensing entirely with the baton in the third movement of Scheherazade. Nor did she conduct through every bar of an instrumental solo, thereby giving the classy LPO woodwind soloists considerable freedom to phrase expressively. Always alert, she directed her considerable energy towards all sections, picking out the often-submerged lines of the second violins or giving the many harp contributions their full due. Above all, she ensured that the music could breathe, conveying its dainty and balletic qualities no less convincingly than the glowering and granitic interventions of the brass. Nothing was rushed, nor did she linger unnecessarily. Hers was a thoroughly musical treatment of the score: no stinting on the poetry nor on the virtuosity.
Lu was undoubtedly the heroine of the evening, but there was another, right by her side, who shone throughout. Without a seductive storyteller this piece with its constantly recurring motifs of the sea loses its essential charm. Alice Ivy-Pemberton’s solos were an absolute delight, warm, succulent and full of allure, the smell of perfume hanging in the air. She soared effortlessly in her instrument’s highest register, transporting the listener on a magic carpet into ethereal regions, yet equally using its lowest register to conjure up the sensuousness present in the floral delights of a Persian garden. Rimsky-Korsakov called his work “a kaleidoscope of fairy-tale images”. In this performance the many protean colours sparkled and entranced. Just as they always should.
