Bavarian Radio photo from the previous evening’s concert
Friday, February 13, 2026
Herkulessaal, Munich
Pelléas. Mélisande. Romeo. Juliet. Maeterlinck. Shakespeare. A Piano Concerto from Luxor.
Fauré’s music for the first two named, as portrayed in Maeterlinck’s play, was wonderfully expressed, so subtle and half-lit, beautifully turned and sensitively played, capturing character and circumstance in water colours applied with gentle brushstrokes, the composer’s refined sensibility not imposed upon – i.e. inflated – by Tugan Sokhiev allowing Fauré’s innate restraint to be an enchanted advocate for this tragic tale.
Which left Shakespeare’s penmanship to chronicle the doomed lovers that are Romeo and Juliet as musically illuminated by Prokofiev’s red-blooded ballet-score (Opus 64). Sokhiev chose the composer’s Second Suite (Opus 64ter), there’s a Third, adding ‘Masks’ and ‘Death of Tybalt’ from Suite No.1 (Opus 64bis). Disappointingly short (about forty minutes) against the amount of music available, if vividly, powerfully and adroitly depicted.
Saint-Saëns’s ‘Egyptian’ Piano Concerto (No.5), his final Concerto for his own instrument, was the result of the Frenchman, an inveterate traveller, holidaying in Egypt and absorbing local sights and sounds into this charming, picturesque and exotic pleaser. Alexandre Kantorow is a master of the virtuoso writing; more than that he invests a range of colours and touches (not least delicacy) as well as enjoyment into this tuneful and elegantly crafted showpiece, with technical wizardry driving the Finale exuberantly, Sokhiev and the BRSO playing their part in bringing the house down. Generous as it was as an encore, and sporting his considerable musical and technical prowess, Kantorow couldn’t persuade otherwise that Liszt’s transcription of the ‘Liebestod’ from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde is rather akin to a silent-film accompaniment.