It’s all too easy, when one hears the cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason play with the mastery and artistic maturity he customarily does, to forget that he’s barely out of his teens and still a conservatoire student. In the Dvorak Cello Concerto in last night’s Prom, he delivered the lyrical passages with his characteristic soulfulness: the dialogue with clarinets (also superbly played) in the slow movement was exquisite.
For all his technical wizardry, and indeed popularity, Kanneh-Mason is not one to play to the gallery: it was the inner, wistful nature of the concerto which was notable rather than the virtuoso display. Indeed in both the taxing passages of double-stopping at the climax of the first movement there was some decidedly erratic intonation. But, by any standards, this is deeply impressive and utterly beguiling playing. It’s exciting to think what enormous potential is inherent in this artist when the technique is even more secure and the tone of greater amplitude.
As the title of Grace-Evangeline Mason’s new work The Imagined Forest suggests, the piece explores a realm of imagination coloured by the natural world. If the enchantment of Stravinsky’s Firebird is momentarily brought to mind, it is in no way a derivative score and Mason skilfully shapes her attractive material to ensure we experience the sense of a transforming encounter with the imaginary forest.
The Armenian-Venezuelan conductor Domingo Hindoyan, here making his inaugural appearance as chief conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, showed in Strauss’s Don Juan that he, like Kanneh-Mason, has an inclination towards introspection. A touch more swagger and opulence of tone would have been welcome, but this is after all a portrait of the obsessive philanderer that probes his darker side.
Paul Hindemith has the reputation of a crusty old purveyor of academic counterpoint – a reputation which he occasionally lived up to. But the Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber, despite its unpromising title, is surprisingly full of circus-style jollity, ably captured in this lively performance.
