Photo, Mark Allan
Wednesday, July 30, 2025
Royal Albert Hall, London
Two mid-last-century Polish works, both in three movements, opening with Grażyna Bacewicz’s Concerto for String Orchestra, consummately composed, she was a considerable violinist, this fairly regularly included piece opening with vital rhythms, here with energy if slightly constrained in swinging passages (venue and engineering also contributing to a lack of edge), the second movement intimately expressive (solo lines) and intense (impassioned tuttis) with a Finale of outdoors vigour. Witold Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra, similarly using indigenous musical material, if absorbed and returned with individuality (modernist tendencies soon to be revealed by this adventurously enquiring composer) found the ‘Intrada’ rather muted (timpani barely registered), the succeeding ‘Capriccio notturno ed Arioso’ notably spectral and gossamer, although the sizeable ‘Passacaglia, Toccata e Corale’ lacked a sense of occasion for all the worthiness.
In the middle, Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto, which opened impressively and imposingly, with no need of arpeggiation from Vadym Kholodenko for the introductory chords; yet, his infallible technique aside, the moment the orchestra entered, the music became heavy and sleepy, the pianist first among equals. The central movement, although eminently musical, again dragged, with impetuousness occasionally evident during the Finale, some ungainly brass detailing as well, and grandly rhetorical come the conclusion. However, his encore, Rachmaninov’s Polka de W. R. (the initials being the composer’s father), found in Kholodenko a lightened-up freedom that teased and delighted. Russian ‘pub piano’!
It was said that this concert was Tadaaki Otaka’s final appearance with BBCNOW (formerly BBC Welsh SO) after forty years of association with one title or another. Aged seventy-seven, he’s “cutting back”. Never say never, though, maybe he’ll return to the principality for his eightieth.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002g1w7
https://askonasholt.com/artist/tadaaki-otaka
Volume two is newly available; review pending.
When one considers the amount of significant music by Welsh composers that Tadaaki introduced during his tenure at BBCNOW this programme demonstrated what? Precisely.