Vienna Tonkunstler Orchestra
Conductor: Yutaka Sado
Pianist: Yeol Eum Son
Cadogan Hall, Zurich International Orchestra Series 2024-5
There are several things to note about this enjoyable concert before we even get to the music. First, a splendid Austrian orchestra, conducted by a Japanese and working with a South Korean soloist is a fine demonstration of the inclusive internationalism of classical music. Second, it’s a joy to see an orchestra of this calibre led with energetic panache by someone so young. Jacob Meining is only 29. Third, even in 2025, it is still unusual to see, and hear, a female timpanist so bravo Margit Schoberleitner. You did a grand job.
Because Sibelius’s Symphony No 7 is “through-written” – that is without breaks between movements – and relatively short, it makes an satisfactory, if unusual, overture-like concert opener. Yutaka Sado leaned on Sibelius’s trademark big brass tunes and ensured we heard lots of crisp, incisive, distinctly Austrian string sound especially in the long slurred runs. An ascending scale is not, I have to say and always think, the most inspiring of recurrent motifs but this performance made it sound pretty fresh and arresting.
If you’re Austrian, as most members of this orchestra are, Mozart is in your blood and his Piano Concerto No 21 was accompanied here with charm and lightness. And Yeol Eum Son delights. She has an attractive feathery touch and blends her sound perfectly with the orchestra’s. She found plenty of elegant drama in the first movement’s cadenza and I really liked the flute and bassoon work in this movement. We then got an affectionately elegant account of Mozart’s most famous andante and a resounding allegro. She followed the concerto with a witty little encore, which I was unable to identify, in which her fingers moved so fast they disappeared.
After the interval the full orchestra returned for a warm and imaginative account of Brahms Symphony No 1. Sado rarely consults the score and often turns his baton into his sleeve in order to get deep and personal with his fingers. Sometimes he barely conducts at all. He simply sets them off and they play. He exaggerates tempi – especially in the opening of the concluding adagio which was very slow and played at the softest possible dynamic to allow for exciting crescendo and accelerando passages. Arguably, when he got to the big melody with trombones and muted violins it was a bit self-indulgent but it pleased the crowd by this point in the evening. Other highlights included nicely balanced horn interjections in the first movement and poignant string work in the andante with the leader’s solo at the end as moving as I’ve ever heard it.
Then there was an encore. Of course there was. Brahms’s Hungarian Rhapsody No 5 was a perfect choice with its almost absurd alternating swoops and fast string passages topped with lots of exciting wind parts. Fun to listen to and fun to play.
