Valery Gergiev’s embrace of the International Tchaikovsky competition has been a terrific shot in the arm for the global profile of the renowned four-yearly Moscow contest that boasts a glittering roll-call of earlier winners including Van Cliburn, Viktoria Mullova and Deborah Voigt. This Cadogan Hall concert, which featured the 2015 winners in four categories, was part of an international tour with Gergiev and his Mariinsky Orchestra, and thus an exceptional opportunity for each to make the kind of impact that the pianist Daniil Trifonov achieved after the equivalent tour in 2011.
On this evidence, however, there was not yet a second Trifonov among this year’s winners. But the ability of the Russian school to continue to produce idiomatic music quite distinct from western conservatoire traditions is genuinely remarkable. This was particularly apparent with the two vocal winners. The mezzo Yulia Matochkina delivered Joan of Arc’s act one aria from Tchaikovsky’s The Maid of Orleans with a big vernacular tone almost unimaginable in a young western singer, while the overall grand prix winner, the Mongolian baritone Ariunbaatar Ganbaatar sang Yeletsky’s aria from the Queen of Spades with abundant presence, but perhaps not in his best voice on this occasion.
The instrumentalists had more extended opportunities to impress. This was fortunate for the Russian pianist Dmitry Masleev, whose playing of the first movement of Rachmaninov’s second concerto felt overwhelmed by Gergiev’s refusal to tailor the orchestral dynamics to suit the hall. Balance was better in the second movement and, although Masleev’s playing was sometimes unyielding, his steely fingered articulation of the closing allegro was formidable.
The 20-year-old Romanian cellist Andrei Ionuț Ioniță may have been the youngest of the winners in the concert but he also gave the clearest evidence of a fully individual musical personality. His account of Haydn’s C major concerto showed a musician with a sparkling technique and the priceless ability to respond to what is going on around him while he is displaying it.
