Student Pulse & Murray Perahia at the Barbican (11/12/13)
Over the past year or so, I have been making a criminal number of bookings using the fantastic Student Pulse app. If you are any kind of student living in London, download it. It is a discounted loyalty/ticketing app backed by the London Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Academy of Ancient Music, BBC Symphony Orchestra and Philharmonia (amongst others), and boasts an ever-growing selection of concerts. Much of the repertoire is unusual, with premieres of new pieces tucked in amongst well loved standards. Most importantly the tickets are cheap: the most I have paid for a seat is £12, with most priced around the £4-6 mark.
The highlight so far has been the Southbank Piano Series, with concerts by Igor Levit and Cedric Tiberghien particular highlights. Boris Berezovsky and Paul Lewis are still to come next year, but if you can try and catch the smaller names in the Queen Elizabeth Hall as the acoustic is less boomy and better suited to solo repertoire than the cavernous Festival Hall. Igor Levit's rendition of the last Beethoven piano sonatas was outstandingly memorable. He approached the works with great maturity, defying the expectations of youthful exuberance with a passionate performance of control and technical skill rather than simply raw energy. After opus. 109 the audience was spellbound, and stayed absolutely silent until he continued with the next piece. Definitely one to watch. Have a listen to his recording of the late piano sonatas here, and watch a short video about his relationship with the music here:
The second half of last night's concert at the Barbican was exceptional. Unfortunately compared to the grandiose transcendentalism of Beethoven's 5th Piano Concerto, Haydn's 77th Symphony in B flat seemed incidental at best. Stravinsky's Concerto in E Major was an interesting take on a Brandenburg-concerto like form, witty and great fun at times, dispatched admirably by the players of the Academy of Ancient Music: however, it remained music too engrossed in its own cleverness to be very 'listenable'. But the second half, with Perahia leading from the keyboard was riveting. This wasn't the studied perfection of the Rattle/Brendel recording with the BPO (listen to them discussing the Concertos here), but Perahia's engagement with the orchestra was second to none as he transitioned smoothly from conducting to playing and back again.
The piece was greeted with great warmth from the audience, prompting an encore of some brilliance. It was a transcription of an aria from one of the Bach Passions (if anyone knows I would be ever-grateful to be enlightened) . Not in the slightest bit showy, all emotion and searching counterpoint - a wonderful finish to an excellent evening.