Anders Hillborg (horn 1954)
Friday, December 19, 2025
Herkulessaal, Munich
Anders Hillborg’s Second Piano Concerto (2023) has Emanuel Ax’s name on it (Manny AX), a whimsical, likeable work, a whirligig of notes with ripples, arpeggiations and tintinnabulations, some orientalism, lots of horsepower. Quite what this San Francisco Symphony commission adds up to I’m not sure, but as a piece that seems tailor-made for this distinctive pianist as well as being audience-friendly, it should have a good innings when played with the charisma brought to it here. Ax went on to render Chopin’s F-minor Nocturne, Opus 55/1, with shape and sympathy, as he had done in St. Louis a few weeks ago.
Opening the concert, Esa-Pekka Salonen (who conducted the premiere of the Hillborg) led Ravel’s memorial to friends lost in WW1, the composer winding the clock back a couple of centuries to dance-forms in vogue back then, hence Le tombeau de Couperin. Of the six movements for piano, Ravel orchestrated four (‘Prélude’, ‘Forlane’, ‘Menuet’ and ‘Rigaudon’). The BR oboist must be mentioned, wonderfully skilled playing, and expressive with it, and if there were a couple of awkward tempo-changes, there was no lack of regret and poignancy tinging the watchmakers’ precision so typical of Ravel, but whether Salonen needed to be so nippy in the ‘Rigaudon’, a burst of razzamatazz, is questionable, no matter how pristine the BRSO’s response.
Somewhat deceiving, too, was the superb playing in a five-movement Berlioz symphony with a gaggle of witches on the guest list; yes, Symphonie fantastique. The BRSO was in top form and may have distracted from Salonen’s – what? – an approach lacking definition, in which the anomaly of a half-speed reduction of tempo in ‘March to the Scaffold’ came across as gratuitous, and the lack of repeats in this movement and the first as parsimonious. Yet, there was also a directional focus that was impressive in a performance that was high-pointed ‘in the country’ and with the witches letting their hair down.