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PHILHARMONIA/JORDAN AT THE FESTIVAL HALL
The Times, UK
October 28, 2012 Sunday 4:03 PM GMT
by: Hilary Finch
Star Rating: 4 stars
Since his first prize at the Jean Sibelius Competition in Helsinki in
2000, Sergey Khachatryan, the young Armenian violinist, has treated
the composer's Violin Concerto as something of a party piece, both
live and on disc. Yet his performance at the Southbank could not have
been less like a prizewinner's showpiece.
Khachatryan holds both the music and his violin close to his heart.
Not for him the tossed back head, the sweep and swirl of the body. He
stands straight on a single axis, his torso barely moving, his head
slightly inclined, and making virtually no eye contact with his
audience. This is the outward manifestation of a deep inwardness in
his playing - so much so that even the most extrovert passages of
Sibelius's Concerto seem to be rising from the innermost depths of
his consciousness.
And the 27-year-old Khachatryan, expansively supported by the
Philharmonia and Philippe Jordan, the evening's conductor, gave this
concerto generous time and space. Finely poised, its opening notes
were barely audible as they rose from the hovering orchestral strings.
They quested rather than emoted their way forward, tentative and
awe-filled.
When energy was unleashed, it pierced the core of every musical nerve,
with intonation so perfectly focused it almost hurt. And, by taking
Sibelius's directions at their word - fast, but not too fast - the
virtuosity of the finale kicked out all the harder and higher.
If spaciousness was Jordan's brief in the Sibelius, then serenity
seemed to be his aim in Brahms's Second Symphony which followed. There
was not a lot of emotional complexity in this performance: rather,
Jordan set up an easy lilt and, with sweeping left to right arcs
described by his left hand, drew song out of the music wherever
he could.
There were moments of slightly uneasy entry and ensemble in the
brass, but Jordan glided through Brahms's modulations of harmony
and of pacing. And, in the finale as well as the third movement,
there was dance, too, with many a twitching foot among the players.
The Times, UK
October 28, 2012 Sunday 4:03 PM GMT
by: Hilary Finch
Star Rating: 4 stars
Since his first prize at the Jean Sibelius Competition in Helsinki in
2000, Sergey Khachatryan, the young Armenian violinist, has treated
the composer's Violin Concerto as something of a party piece, both
live and on disc. Yet his performance at the Southbank could not have
been less like a prizewinner's showpiece.
Khachatryan holds both the music and his violin close to his heart.
Not for him the tossed back head, the sweep and swirl of the body. He
stands straight on a single axis, his torso barely moving, his head
slightly inclined, and making virtually no eye contact with his
audience. This is the outward manifestation of a deep inwardness in
his playing - so much so that even the most extrovert passages of
Sibelius's Concerto seem to be rising from the innermost depths of
his consciousness.
And the 27-year-old Khachatryan, expansively supported by the
Philharmonia and Philippe Jordan, the evening's conductor, gave this
concerto generous time and space. Finely poised, its opening notes
were barely audible as they rose from the hovering orchestral strings.
They quested rather than emoted their way forward, tentative and
awe-filled.
When energy was unleashed, it pierced the core of every musical nerve,
with intonation so perfectly focused it almost hurt. And, by taking
Sibelius's directions at their word - fast, but not too fast - the
virtuosity of the finale kicked out all the harder and higher.
If spaciousness was Jordan's brief in the Sibelius, then serenity
seemed to be his aim in Brahms's Second Symphony which followed. There
was not a lot of emotional complexity in this performance: rather,
Jordan set up an easy lilt and, with sweeping left to right arcs
described by his left hand, drew song out of the music wherever
he could.
There were moments of slightly uneasy entry and ensemble in the
brass, but Jordan glided through Brahms's modulations of harmony
and of pacing. And, in the finale as well as the third movement,
there was dance, too, with many a twitching foot among the players.