Philharmonia
Conductor: Ryan Bancroft
Pianist: Michelle Cann
Royal Festival Hall
07 March 2025
It’s hard to think of a trickier concert opener than Charles Ives’s otherworldy The Unanswered Question which – shades of Bruckner 7 – starts almost imperceptibly, relies on pianissimo strings , gently shifting harmonies and must require exceptional levels of concentration. Ryan Bancroft, conducting without baton for the whole of this concert, brought out the best in the Philharmonia and created a compelling sound world, especially given the trumpet interjections with the trumpeter (Jason Evans) in a box elsewhere in the auditorium.
Thence to the much more familiar territory of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 4 and an arresting performance by American pianist Michelle Cann, wearing a wonderfully glittery dress with inbuilt cloak and working with Philharmonia for the first time. She set a gentle tempo with her initial piano statement and we got mellifluous orchestra playing with lots of loving detail in the rest of the movement. It is, however, the ground breaking (for 1806) andante which really distinguishes this concerto and Cann played it with masses of colour and exaggerated elasticity which added to the integral intimacy, while the accompanying string work was pleasingly incisive. Then came a cheerfully insouciant account of the Rondo with some pretty stunning left hand work in the cadenza. There is something faintly incongruous about using natural trumpets and timps alongside a Steinway concert grand but the piano tone was pretty bright and it worked.
I have long since come to the conclusion that the best way to take Also sprach Zarathustra is to “read” it as a fine symphonic work rather than getting too hung up on the Nietzschian philosophy which inspired it. With that in mind I enjoyed the Philharmonia’s take on the famous opening statement which becomes the theme for the rest of the work – delivered with as many fs as possible and exactly the sort of full-blooded live performance I hankered to hear during Lockdown when I couldn’t have it. And the orchestra then gave a magnificent and moving account of all those individualised string parts, often building from the back. My “plus one” at this concert observed that Also sprach Zarathustra, written when Strauss was only 32, is Brahms meets Stravinsky and that’s exactly the quality which Bancroft brought out in this rendering. The performance of the whole piece was eloquent, controlled and dramatic with excellent work from timpanist, Antoine Sigure. And Scott Dickinson’s viola solos added a richly plaintive element.
