Much has been made recently of Riccardo Chailly's rethinking of Brahms's orchestral works. Though he is far from alone among modern conductors – think Gardiner, think Herreweghe, think Rattle – in trying to restore clearer textures, crisper phrasing and a general press-on approach to the composer, Chailly's current Brahms cycle at the Barbican, with his outstanding Leipzig orchestra, is undoubtedly a major event. Yet in this second concert of the series, more traditional Brahmsian values and virtues also made themselves felt.
The backbone of these four October concerts are the symphonies. But even the Second, in some ways the most straightforwardly successful of the four, had to yield the spotlight in this concert to the mighty Second Piano Concerto in B flat, played in the first half of the evening with tremendous authority by Arcadi Volodos. The arrestingly rustic timbre of the opening horn solo immediately stamped the performance with Chailly's attentiveness to Brahmsian detail and balance, but Volodos's account had all the leonine weight and fabulous tonal control that our grandparents' generation would have expected in this work.
Few composers combine the old and the new as rewardingly as Brahms, however, and there was nothing irreconcilable between the two approaches. The meeting of Volodos's large-scale reading and Chailly's often revelatory attention to small things, all marvellously executed by the Leipzigers, never jarred. Each seemed to gain something from the other. The acceleration at the end of the second movement was a thrilling joint enterprise, while the magically hushed return to the main theme in the slow movement had them very much on the same page, too.
Chailly brought the same purposeful approach to the D major Symphony, tightly phrased and rhythmically urgent in the opening movement, with lots of light and shade in the detailed attention to dynamics in the middle movements. The finale bounded along – and we got a sumptuously performed first Hungarian Dance as an encore.
• Did you catch this performance – or any other recently? Tell us about it using #Iwasthere
