This opening concert in the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra's 2014-15 season carried some significant markers: the orchestra turned 40 earlier this year, a milestone in musical maturity that audiences now anticipate will be regularly showcased; Jaap van Zweden was on the podium, entering his third year as music director and increasingly expected to evidence an established marriage with his excellent team of players, rather than a heady honeymoon; and Yefim Bronfman, one the world's most reliable pianists, was the concerto soloist who surely couldn't fail to excite.
There was also the memory of the corresponding concert that marked the opening of last year's season, when another distinguished pianist, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, stumbled quite badly through parts of Beethoven's . Would history repeat itself?
Brahms' is a huge work, both in length (it easily fills half a programme) and in interpretative challenges (it bombed at its premiere in 1859 and has had its fair share of pedestrian performances since). Bronfman's long and successful track record raised expectations of a revelatory account, which never materialised. Aside from tempo issues (an opening movement that never quite escaped the feeling of a stoic plod, and a slow movement too fast to fully capture its aching beauty), Bronfman largely rejected the use of , was sparing with his changes in colour and, at one point in the finale, suddenly thumped the keyboard so aggressively as though he were venting a personal grudge against the instrument.
