Often when illness forces a conductor to withdraw from a concert, it hands a “star is born” opportunity to some up-and-coming youngster. Not here. When Yuri Temirkanov (born 1938), the St Petersburg Philharmonic’s chief conductor, had to cancel, the conductor who stepped in was Vassily Sinaisky (born 1947).
Not much room for youth there, but there was nothing sclerotic about the performance, as Sinaisky imbued Prokofiev’s First Symphony, known as the Classical, with playful, even cheeky energy. While there was ample weight in the playing, there was also a lightness that, in the second movement especially, would not have been out of place in Mozart.
In Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, soloist Julia Fischer displayed a clean, light tone, forward in the instrumental mix but with no sense of pushing for effect. Sinaisky’s conducting was unfussy and to the point, while Fischer — a very mobile player, almost dancing round the stage — captured a freewheeling, improvisatory quality: in the third movement, the interplay between her and the wind players was delightfully fresh and frisky. Amazingly enough, Fischer returned after the interval, not as soloist but as one of the galley slaves in the string section.
Few superstars are willing to do that, but she seemed to enjoy being part of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. She can’t have been there to add weight: even without her, the orchestra was already considerably augmented.
Instead of the four double basses of the first half, now there were ten, their bestial grumble matching the angry rasp of the brass on the opposite side of the platform.
That sense of a musical landscape laid out across the entire stage gave real depth to a performance that was disciplined yet rugged, at times almost to the point of recklessness.
