Classical review: BBC SSO / Stefan Solyom

Published on Wednesday 3 December 2008 19:42

BBC SSO / STEFAN SOLYOM CITY HALLS, GLASGOW

PRESENTER Stephen Johnson jokingly apologised to soloist Nelson Goerner for asking him to play a short extract from one of the more virtuosic passages of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No 3 within seconds of walking on stage.

For Goerner however, such a request seemed to pose little difficulty. Indeed, throughout Johnson's presentation of Rachmaninov's work a number of similarly demanding quotations were performed, replete with the kind of emotional depth that most performers struggle to communicate within a complete performance of the work.

When Goerner was asked to talk a little about the concerto, he was at pains to balance the rhetoric of colossal impossibility so often used to describe the piece with a more delicate vocabulary, speaking of dream-like passages and fragile inner-voices. With this analysis in mind, Johnson introduced the performance by asking the audience to choose between these two competing interpretations.

The hushed intensity of the opening refrain alone seemed to deny such simple analysis, however, with Goerner willing the orchestra to respond as the horn and strings took up the evocative theme in a richly focused tone.

Without ever losing the contradiction of lightness and power heard in these opening bars, Goerner grew progressively more attentive to the poetry of the work as the technical demands increased, finding under-appreciated songs in the most virtuosic of cadenzas. As the orchestra fell on every shade in his playing, Goerner slowly unfolded Rachmaninov's familiar work to reveal a complexity that rendered the description of it as a simple opposition of power and romance vastly inadequate.