Since winning the top prizes at the 2019 Tchaikovsky Competition, Alexandre Kantorow has been blazing the grandest and brightest of trails across the world’s concert halls and in the recording studio. Now he has taken the Proms by storm with a masterly account of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no.4. The performance, a well-conceived collaboration with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and its inspirational conductor Vasily Petrenko, bequeathed to posterity a tapestry that brilliantly captured Kantorow’s sonorous playing, his exquisite shaping of phrases, and his flair in the interactions with the orchestra. For those in the audience for whom this was the first time of hearing the maestro in the flesh it will, I think, be fondly remembered.
In performances of the concerto, some pianists, having taken the stool, will stare at the keyboard as if in a face-off with a cobra of their own making. Kantorow, as cool as you like, sat down and touched a chord – that famous G major chord, the placing of which revolutionised the concerto form. From that moment on the eloquence of his touch defined the grace and passion with which the performance was infused. In the second movement, often characterised as Orpheus calming savage beasts into contentment, Kantorow and this collaborators simply agreed that they could speak their own peace. It was less of a dialogue and more about seeing things from different perspectives and leaving the audience to marvel at the eloquence of the exchange. That eloquence was also evident in the dazzling final movement – and will without any doubt be heard again when Kantorow returns, as he most surely will. For an encore he played, unannounced, a transcription of Stravinsky's The Firebird by Guido Agosti.
There were still faint echoes of the encore vibrating around the auditorium when Petrenko and his troops opened the counter-offensive against cultural barbarism known as Shostakovich’s Symphony no.10 in E minor. This was as brilliant a performance as I have heard in over fifty years of being hooked by its outpouring of studied passion, its illustration of naked savagery and its ebullient affirmation right over might – if one could put it so bluntly. Petrenko was a majestic presence, his gestures expansive and coaxing in the broad paragraphs and in his wise counsel to the orchestra in steering clear of bombast and empty rhetoric. The strings were magnificent in the shower of notes given to them; wind and brass, forming a formidable phalanx, were reminiscent of the old Soviet sound, and the percussion had the back of the piece very firmly held – the timpanist and the snare drummer were deadly rear gunners. This was stirring stuff indeed.
Opening the concert was Ligeti’s Lontano, another instalment of the BBC’s salute to his centenary. It is a landmark piece that helped establish the composer in his own acreage within the post-war avant-garde landscape. Parts of that field had barbed-wire and armed guards, not to mention the land-mines. However, Ligeti proved himself a fearless and inventive commando; his music is full of rich textures evoked by unusual orchestration, and expressive harmonies arising magically from a highly personal brand of polyphony. In Petrenko and the RPO he had loyal comrades whose refined playing beautifully captured the fine details of this piece. Although the title means “distant”, there was an immediacy in the performance which sounded freshly minted – from the feathery touch of the strings to the menacing growl of the tuba. Ten minutes of wonder.
[Update 17-Aug-2023: The original review had the wrong encore. Thanks to Alan Rubin for pointing this out]
