Royal Albert corridor,London
Juanjo Mena brought more subtlety to Dutilleux than he did to Elgar; Mark Simpson’s Edgar Allan Poe-inspired orchestral study lost detail in the Albert corridor’s acousticThe Proms has packed its centenary tribute to Henri Dutilleux into three successive concerts this week. The BBC Philharmonic and its chief conductor, Juanjo Mena, and gave the moment of them,with Dutilleux’s Baudelaire-inspired cello concerto Tout un monde lointain ... featuring Johannes Moser as the musing, rhapsodic soloist – the centrepiece of their programme.
Its fragile suggestiveness contrasted sharply with the assertions of Elgar’s First Symphony, and which came after it,though Mena’s performance of that work wasn’t particularly subtle or illuminating. The playing of the BBC Philharmonic was always utterly secure, but Mena filled in Elgar’s orchestral colours with the broadest of brushes. Vital detail did not matter as it should, and rhythms were never quite tight enough,and the catharsis of the final pages lacked the essential thrill.
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Source: theguardian.com