Dressed in a sharp suit, black T-shirt and scarlet cummerbund, sporting a man-bun and a cascade of silky dark hair, Franco-Serbian violinist Nemanja Radulović certainly has rockstar looks. But he plays like an absolute angel, caressing the strings like crushed silk to turn the middle movement of Aram Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto into an Armenian lullaby.
On the surface, Khachaturian’s concerto is painted in bold primary colours, often brash and loud – part of its appeal, to be honest – and a vehicle for supreme virtuosity. Radulović has that virtuosity in spades, especially playing the fiendish cadenza by the concerto’s dedicatee David Oistrakh, but he can also find the perfume in the score, teasing out aromatic head notes or tugging on spidery double-stopped chords. But there was no denying Khachaturian’s vulgarity either, the Philharmonia brass letting rip with a good old-fashioned Soviet blast or two.
Radulović is a “Featured Artist” this season, and it’s clear that he and the Philharmonia players have already struck up a rapport. He is the most collegiate of soloists, turning towards clarinettist Mark van de Wiel for their coquettish exchanges before the first movement cadenza, or facing the orchestra at the start of the Andante sostenuto, soaking up their sound. It was little surprise when his encore saw him duet with leader Rebecca Chan in a Shostakovich prelude. He also has an evident rapport with conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali, with almost nose-to-nose contact and plenty of smiles.
The Philharmonia played very well, with an immensely rich string sound, judiciously balanced, but quite how they can follow Rouvali’s idiosyncratic baton twirling remains a mystery. Just the evening before, Karina Canellakis’ crystal clear beat had graced the same carpeted podium; the contrast here couldn’t have been greater. It’s a style that plays to the gallery and is a visual irritant, but close your eyes and the performances were fine, particularly the crisp, taut reading of the opening movement of Tchaikovsky’s Winter Daydreams, his charming First Symphony.
There was some lovely woodwind playing: powdery flute launching the snowy journey; plangent oboe weaving through the Land of Desolation, Land of Mists; garrulous chattering in the Scherzo. Rouvali kept everything tight, although he couldn’t resist tinkering, bending lines out of shape or exaggerating rubatos. The introduction to the finale seemed overly portentous, but the pay-off came when the rollicking dance kicked in merrily.
The symphony’s coda felt laboured, Rouvali not encouraging the orchestra to really cut loose. Strangely, the same had happened in a tame Sabre Dance, closing a fun trio of numbers from Khachaturian’s ballet Gayaneh, a rendition which needed more cut and thrust.
