LSO/Boulez - Barbican, 30 April 2008
Bartók's Concerto for Two Pianos and Percussion is such a rarity on the London schedules that it's welcome no matter who's performing it.
But having been promised Lang Lang and Hélène Grimaud, I was a little disappointed to find them substituted without warning or explanation by Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich. Aimard is a great favourite of mine, he excels in Bartók, and his performance with frequent partner Stefanovich was predictably exemplary. But I still itch to hear what the man who said "If you like hip hop, then you will like Bartók" would have made of it.
The percussion soloists, the LSO's own Neil Percy and Nigel Thomas, were immaculate and unflashy, and Pierre Boulez pulled the whole thing together tautly. If it didn't have the impact of the pared-down Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion from which it is drawn, that's wasn't down to the performance, but to Bartók's sprawling arrangements, which tend to grab ideas out of the hands of the soloists only to lose them in the orchestra. That Boulez got a far warmer reception on his entrance than he did at the end of this piece reflects entirely on the material.
Boulez's thoughtful programme placed more piano work rearranged for orchestra, his own Notations, at the end of the evening.
With orchestration these become almost unrecognisable, expanded in all directions. The tablecloth size of the conductor's score, running at about two bars per massive page judging from the manic speed of Boulez's flipping, evidenced the intricacy of his arrangements.
The orchestra too was massive, extra percussion and all hands on deck, but every detail was crystal clear, and there was all the focus and momentum the Bartók lacked.
Notation II was the brief and explosive finale, reprised scrappily but even more exuberantly as an encore.
In between these blockbusters came Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces, sounding almost cosy in Boulez's affectionate reading and Stravinsky's Le Chant du rossignol, light-footed and sparkling, with stunning, perfectly judged flute, violin and trumpet solos.
Boulez returns to the Barbican on 11 May with Michelle De Young for Duke Bluebeard's Castle and Schoenberg's Die glückliche Hand - not to be missed.
