Review of Hallé concert with Boris Giltburg and conducted by Alexandre Bloch

Boris Giltburg cr Sasha Gusov

The Hallé like to bill each concert with a title these days: what good luck that this one was given that of the music played in its second half, Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra, as the conductor, soloist and piano concerto originally advertised had all changed by the time it happened.

So we had the chance to witness Alexandre Bloch’s debut with the orchestra. He’s no stranger to Manchester, though, having been a junior conducting fellow at the Royal Northern College of Music, after the Paris Conservatoire. He won the Donatella Flick Conducting Competition in 2012, and I remember his part in the 2013 Chester Festival, appearing with Manchester Camerata, which was followed by a move to the London Symphony Orchestra as assistant conductor.

He too the Hallé through Debussy’s Prélude à L’Après-midi d’un faune first, with the opening magically played by Amy Yule, starting from a very gentle piano but highly varied in dynamic as it proceeded. With the orchestra limited to 40 strings (as it was also for the concerto that followed) and the rich tones of Marie Leenhardt’s harp, the textures of this music were beautiful, and its phrasing was delicate while rhythmically quite brisk and always precise.

Boris Giltburg – a welcome guest in the past – appeared to play Chopin’s Piano concerto no. 2. He’s played a lot of Rachmaninov in his time (including here with the Hallé) and did not hesitate to use the power of the piano at times in this one, but he, too, can produce wonderful delicacy and dramatize the changes in sound the score requires. The Hallé wind were on exceptionally fine form for their solos in this piece. And we got an encore from Giltburg in a gorgeously sweet version of Chopin’s E minor Étude.

Overall it was still a short-ish programme, but Alexandre Bloch compensated for that with a brief lecture, illustrated by his own singing voice, on the Lutosławski before it was played. In performance – now with 60 strings, six percussionists and all the other resources the score prescribes – it was intensely colourful and brilliantly delivered, with the kind of instrumental virtuosity that conceals the height of the skills on display, and rhythmic energy constantly to the fore. The long, final Passacaglia, Toccata e Corale was passionately built to its climax, with brassy splendour and a near-devotional intensity from the strings.