The centrepiece of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra’s Promenade with their chief conductor Lahav Shani was a efficiency of Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto fairly not like another. Shani, like his mentor Daniel Barenboim, is an excellent pianist in addition to a conductor, and on this occasion performed the concerto himself, directing his orchestra from the keyboard. It’s a well-known sufficient apply in fact, in Mozart and Beethoven, although some may think about it foolhardy utilized to Prokofiev, whose piano writing is nothing if not exactingly athletic, and who additionally calls for orchestral enjoying and conducting of just about clockwork precision.
It proved, nonetheless, to be a tour de power that bordered on staggering. The devil-may-care brilliance and impertinent appeal of Shani’s pianism swimsuit Prokofiev all the way down to the bottom for starters, and also you couldn’t assist however be struck by the disarming dexterity of his approach with these pushed, helter-skelter allegros, or the ethereal grace with which he launched the sluggish motion’s virtually balletic variations. Sweeping arm gestures in passages when the piano is silent managed tempo and expression, however more often than not we have been conscious about the orchestra’s intense give attention to watching and listening to one another in addition to to him. The entire thing was actual edge-of-your-seat stuff as ensemble and steadiness risked coming aside at any second. However they by no means did, and the tip end result was thrilling past perception.
The remainder of the programme consisted of Twentieth-century French music, the place the finesse of Shani’s conducting (he’s terribly elegant on the rostrum) and the detailed fantastic thing about the Rotterdam orchestra’s enjoying spoke volumes. Lili Boulanger’s D’Un Soir Triste, unsettling in its consciousness of encroaching mortality, was all sombre, brooding depth. Shani took Debussy’s La Mer extra slowly than some interpreters, lingering over the rating’s sensuous magnificence, with out dropping sight of rigidity or momentum, and the impact was merely ravishing. Ravel’s La Valse introduced the live performance to an in depth with its darkish but alluring intimations of decline and eventual destruction. The string tone sounded at occasions so sensual as to be decadent. Woodwind and brass alternately seduced and glared. And the ending, as rhythm and music itself lastly appear to implode, was terrifying.
