Review of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet with Gábor Takács-Nagy and Manchester Camerata at the Stoller Hall, Manchester

 

Mozart’s late piano concertos are among his greatest and subtlest creations, and consequently both immensely rewarding and, by the same token, very challenging.

The ongoing recording project by Manchester Camerata under its music director, Gábor Takács-Nagy, with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet as soloist, brought a fascinating concert at Chetham’s on Friday night. Word had clearly got around: there was hardly a spare seat to be found.

Takács-Nagy and the orchestra, led by Caroline Pether, got things off to a fizzing start with the Marriage of Figaro overture – contemporary with the C minor concerto, K491 and no. 24, which was to follow it. It was meant to be a fresh take on a familiar piece, said the maestro, and so it proved. With 20 strings in total, the balance was bound to favour clarity in the wind lines, and they emerged prominently, even from a big round sound underpinned by modern timpani.

Big sound was a characteristic of Bavouzet’s approach to the concerto, too, with plenty of pedal used on the Schimmel instrument to underscore the music’s tragi-Romantic qualities. He knows how to be self-effacing, too, and let the woodwind soloists have their fair share of the limelight, but the piano has necessarily to claim much of it. He had a grand and dramatic first movement cadenza to offer (by Hummel), which contributed to the solemn and weighty effect.

The slow movement of K491 is a puzzle: such a simple, seemingly childish, opening tune surely requires some decoration, but how much? Bavouzet began very modestly, indeed making it seem a mere formality, and though the ingenuity increased (and there was more in the finale), I wasn’t quite convinced it was being used to heighten the emotional impact of the music (as classical embellishment really should). The finale itself presents its problems, and conductor and soloist must have decided it needed some drama to finish, with a touch on the accelerator when the minor key signature returned.

The second half of the concert began with a real curiosity: an overture for a play by Goethe (Erwin und Elmire) written by Princess Anna Amalia von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach, a contemporary of Mozart. Made-up name, I thought when I first saw it (we are near April Fools’ Day, after all), but apparently she did exist. Was it a bit cynical to dig up her efforts under the ABO Trust’s programme to promote historical women composers? The fact that her composition, a pleasant exercise in Empfindsamkeit, survived probably only illustrates another inequality (of aristocrats versus mere professional musicians) in her day. But at least – unlike Mozart – she believed in the employment prospects of second flutes.

The other piano concerto was no. 25 in C major, K503. It had all the virtues of the previous Bavouzet/Takács-Nagy major key concerto interpretations – lightness of spirit, conversational interplay between soloist and orchestra, well crafted contrasts and, in this case, a bit of a tempo change in the first movement to energise proceedings. The big cadenza (by the young American virtuoso Kenneth Broberg) was a real turn, involving a near-quotation of La Marseillaise which encouraged many a chuckle among its listeners.

In the lovely Andante slow movement Bavouzet soon began to charm with some melodic embellishment, very tasteful again. The finale was full of brilliance and romped home with a dizzying sprint of an Allegretto.