Salle: İş Sanat, Istanbul

A cello concerto by CPE Bach headlines Nicolas Altstaedt's appearance at the Istanbul Music Festival with the Munich Chamber Orchestra.

Mikhail Rudy’s recital adapting music to animated art projections disappoints. 

Steven Isserlis' passionate and improvisatory reading of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto served as the saving grace for the otherwise lacklustre programme.

Mischa Maisky, the de-facto romantic cellist, gave the Istanbul audience a triple treat of passionate cello playing in Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Bruch, but surprisingly enough he was in most uninhibited during the Haydn concerto.Mr Maisky’s vibrato is excessive, a trait inherited from his longtime teacher and mentor Gregor Piatigorsky, but it never gets in the way of music.

Even if the joke is good, it’s all in the telling, as they say. Mozart’s Ein musikalischer Spaß (“A Musical Joke”) is good, but it probably meant more to its contemporaries than it does to us today. It is Mozart’s satire of the incompetent composers, musicians and copyists of his time. It’s an inside joke, for all practical purposes.

The billing looked intriguing enough: Kevin Griffiths – the young London-born conductor, celebrated for his dedication to contemporary music, coupled with his fellow countryman Paul Lewis – one of today’s prominent performers of Beethoven and particularly Schubert, in an evening dedicated to Mozart’s music.

Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra is no stranger when it comes to working with world-renowned soloists – their earlier collaborative roster includes the likes of Sviatoslav Richter, Menuhin, Rostropovich et al, but their rapport with Emmanuel Pahud is something that transcends musical partnership and wanders into the organically-knit companionship territory.