Despair, violence and lyricism from Kantorow’s Prokofiev at Rencontres Musicales d’Évian

There’s no suggestion that Sergei Prokofiev suffered from bipolar disorder. Therefore, when he wrote his Piano Concerto no. 2 in G minor, dedicated to a friend who committed suicide, he was showing extraordinary empathy; the piece interleaves depths of abject despair with outbursts of furious violence and spells of fervent, passionate lyricism. The concerto doesn’t spare the pianist. It is so punishingly demanding, not least physically, that many of the greats haven’t touched it, while others hammer their way through the violent passages but are unable to put across the nuance.

Alexandre Kantorow, playing the concerto at La Grange au Lac in Évian, showed complete mastery of the work in all its ever-shifting moods. From the very first chords, the left hand rising and falling while the right plays a gentle, lyrical melody, Kantorow demonstrated the uncanny knack that every choice he made had the ring of truth, as if there was no possible other way that this music could have been played. Every change of dynamic felt just right, every rubato resolved so elegantly as to prompt a sigh of satisfaction. His demeanour was of intense concentration, bent from the waist until his face was at sniffing distance of the keys, the placement of his hands measured and deliberate on every chord, often seeming to caress the keyboard to conjure sound out of it.

The first truly punishing piano passage is the first movement cadenza (which lasts around five minutes, nearly half the length of the movement), in which Kantorow plumbed inner demons to their limits (of the composer? the pianist?  the listener? we cannot know for sure). In the second movement Scherzo, the pianist is called upon to play at full tilt for two and a half minutes in a relentless rhythm that cannot be allowed to drift by the smallest fraction, punctuated by agonised shrieks from the orchestra. Kantorow delivered this without a blink. In the third movement, he moved brilliantly between threat and lyricism; in the fourth, the piano becomes insistent and then triumphant – or does it? Again, the question is left open.

Sadly, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia were less than comfortable with the piece. For all their great qualities, of which many were to be on show in the second half, Tugan Sokhiev’s best efforts proved insufficient to get his musicians to synchronise confidently with their soloist. Individual orchestral passages were well played and the orchestra were certainly capable of producing thrilling sounds, but too often, entries were slightly mistimed or phrases sounded rushed.

The second half work, Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, was altogether more to the orchestra’s taste. They produced delightful lilt and romantic swell. The famous second movement theme rang pleasantly through the horns and then its string reprise. The third movement placed one in the audience at one of Tchaikovsky’s ballets, the fourth was delivered with martial vigour. There were still occasional flubs and errors, but this was a performance far superior to the Prokofiev.

Sokhiev’s conducting style is idiosyncratic, to say the least. He conducts without a baton, exhorting his troops to greater things with a broad variety of gestures with both hands – it must be a science in itself to decode the meaning of which fingers are outstretched, whether they move horizontally or vertically, above his head or below podium level. But there was no mistaking the grin of delight on the face of Sokhiev and several first violinists when a tricky pizzicato phrase was executed to perfection and no mistaking his military strut, chest puffed out, which launched the thrilling finale.