12th March, 2015
Royal Festival Hall, London, United Kingdom
BEETHOVEN "Egmont" Overture
STRAUSS Horn Concerto No. 2
BRAHMS Symphony No. 4
Katy Woolley (horn)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Tugan Sokhiev (conductor)
Switching to a different orchestra (Philharmonia), it is all-German affair tonight here at the RFH. The advantage of looking comparatively young, being rather underdressed and being unfashionably late meant that I was offered a very cheap student ticket to sit in the sixth row, slightly to the right, at conductor level - not bad! - and it allowed me to explore some unfamiliar territories with totally overwhelming impact. I was completely blown by the thunderous strings in Beethoven's "Egmont Overture". Unfortunately, I do not know the instrument well enough to comment on Strauss' "Horn Concerto No. 2", but I have a feeling the wonderfully colourful playing of the orchestra, especially in the second movement, completely upstaged the soloist. The real winner tonight was the urgently intense Brahms 4. Tugan Sokhiev went for earth-shattering outpour of passion, again with much full-body strings, and the results was a spell-binding performance throughout. The magic was such that he allowed the orchestra to go auto-pilot in the third movement, giving only minimal amounts of cues, with a lot of facial commands that reminded me of what Carlos Kleiber used to do. You can only do that when the orchestra is thoroughly well-rehearsed. Brahms 4 might be standard repertoire, but it is not every day you get to hear it played with such total conviction. What a couple of nights.
This entry was originally published in my private Instagram account.
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