Ran Jia, the Piano Poetess Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra HK Cultural Centre Concert Hall Reviewed: Jan 14
In promoting the mainland pianist, Ran Jia deserved a better platform. Mozart's Concert Rondo in D, K382 is a set of variations on a snippety tune that sticks in its groove like an unattended music box. The piece requires special input to make its dubious charms work and such magic wasn't at Ran's behest: she was playing it for the first time in public, as was also the case with Haydn's Keyboard Concerto in D, Hob. XVIII:11.
Being quoted in the programme as believing that this enduringly popular work from 1780 was written 'still in baroque style' may have accounted for her limited empathy with the impish nature of the first movement, the need to change mood and tone significantly in the next, and the advisability of not taking the finale so fast its irrepressible fun gets lost in a stampede of notes.
Conductor David Atherton set the whole ball rolling with an elegant tempo and a becalmed sense of dynamic variation that clearly weren't for docking onto Haydn's helter-skelter wit either.
A pair of British works topped and tailed the programme. Atherton took Elgar's Cockaigne at a laid-back pace, producing long lines and even longer crescendos that were well sustained but barely realised Elgar's idiosyncrasies.
The least lyrical of Vaughan Williams' symphonies, it's no surprise that the caustic No 4 doesn't often get dusted down, but it takes a lot of beating as a 30-minute cathartic assault. The performance certainly disturbed the comfort zone at the tumultuous start and close of the work, but the deceptive calms and jolly maypole tunes also need to prod the angst beneath the surface.