This was a fine way of spending an evening, and the first time for me at which it felt like Christmas might be on its way!
Vladimir Ashkenazy has a fondness for the recording studio that's perhaps unusual among such established musicians: 'Music has to inspire you, and not the fact that it is a public performance; otherwise, why are we musicians if we can perform only when there are people listening?'. For the last several decades relatively few people have seen him at the piano keyboard as he has confined that first love to the studio (which is something of a shame).
But that is not to say he has lost any of his touch or enthusiasm for live conducting. He practically runs to the podium, greeting as many musicians as he has time to greet with fond handshakes, before launching into truly dynamic conducting - handling a performance which will have been honed to perfection in rehearsal (parts of which, some of the audience will have been lucky enough to witness earlier in the evening).
As well as the orchestral pieces by Brahms, we were treated to the Rigoletto Fantasy created and played by Mats Lidström for cello and orchestra - a startling and deeply enjoyable piece encompassing and developing themes and melodies from the Verdi opera.
Lidström the cellist is from Stockholm, a musician with huge amounts of teaching experience including becoming a professor at the Royal Academy of Music in 1993. He has recorded for a number of companies as well as for his own interesting project: he transcribes, explores and plays just about any work by Bach for his own instrument, 'as if Bach had been a cellist', so it is unsurprising that the encore for the first half of the evening was a transcription of one of the Goldberg Variations, handled triumphantly by Lidström and concertmaster Carmine Lauri.
Lidström describes himself as disciplined and focused and has an extraordinary output of work to prove the point: this is a man who even took advantage of a brief forced break in his playing career to write a 'Tintin Suite' for cello and piano! He has worked with Ashkenazy a few times before, and the deep connection between performer and conductor was very evident. Lidström has a very fine 1850s cello by Joseph Rocca, which has a fabulous tone even if it was occasionally a bit submerged in an orchestral fortissimo.
The second symphony of Brahms is a well known work, filled with melodies and the product of a long and happy summer holiday - very pure music, without any apparent programmatic design behind it - albeit a work that was presented to his publisher as 'so melancholy that you will not be able to bear it. I have never written anything so sad.'!
This was a storming performance of the piece, bringing the concert to a dramatic and thoroughly cheerful conclusion.