A sell-out for this opening concert of Kahchun Wong’s second season at the helm of The Hallé saw the superbly crafted account of Elgar’s Cello Concerto before an over-egged account of Rachmaninov’s second symphony.
The withdrawal of Truls Mørk as the originally scheduled soloist for the Elgar proved an auspicious opportunity for the orchestra’s recently appointed new Principal Cello, Rachel Helleur-Simcock, fresh from the Berliner Philharmoniker, to take centre stage in her very first concert. Elgar is very much in the genes of the Hallé, having been a defining feature of Sir Mark Elder’s tenure. Being the only work of the evening Wong conducted from the score, one sensed that he had less to say about the piece than the rest of the programme. Instead, he happily allowed the richly resplendent strings to glow with autumnal warmth in the opening movement, a broad legato establishing a compelling sense of space.
The solo line was tackled by Helleur-Simcock with a full palette of colours, with immaculate attention to beauty of sound in the first and third movements and virtuosic precision in the second. The third was the clear emotional heart of the work here, with exquisite softness and tenderness applied in the orchestra and soloist’s interaction, the auditorium held to rapt silence, and seemingly infinite space between phrases. The finale explored every shade of darkness and light, making for a memorable debut.
The Elgar was flanked by 20th-century Russian works. Shostakovich’s Festive Overture got the season underway with an uproarious bang, full of woodwind fireworks and horn leaps, but the account of Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony proved problematic. This is clearly music Wong knows inside out and loves, but his enthusiasm to apply his own personal stamp of originality sadly resulted in a performance which seemed an exercise in hyperbole. This was a performance which lurched from moment to moment without any real sense of momentum, the tempos pulled around so much as to distort the sense of the whole beyond credibility. Tempos were often so slow as to end up becalmed, the whole symphony coming in at around 70 minutes. So frequently were the brakes slammed on for ritardandos, or minor highlights within movements exaggerated like the climax of a Mahler symphony, that by the end it all felt like a caricature of Rachmaninov.
All that said, the musicians mostly did an admirable job of adapting to the idiosyncrasies coming from the podium despite some of the more egregious tempo changes leaving some passages horribly exposed. There were some inevitable slips of ensemble in places, but the wind solos and beauty of string sound in the first movement were meticulously curated, and Sergio Castelló López’s clarinet solo in the third was a wonder to behold. The last pages were rousing enough, but the earlier histrionics had left little in the tank to give the coda the required sense of elevation. Nonetheless, the BBC Radio 3 broadcast on 13 October will be worth catching, even if the Rachmaninov will not suit all tastes.
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