Perhaps the greatest challenge for classical musicians remains making old, often well-known pieces sound as if they were composed yesterday. The Isarphilharmonie shows how this works in the ideal case the Munich pianist Alice Sara Ott in collaboration with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO): In Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, she moves grippingly into the first movement, then lets the playful and the melancholic sound as freely, and finally thunders out a cadenza at the limits of what is technically possible that the audience then waits in breathless silence for the slow movement to begin.
She gives it a depth of longing with her soft, but never coreless attack, and then lets the finale whirl along brilliantly and quickly. Sure, either way also That’s how Beethoven composed it. But with Ott there is something added that evening, which one must call the grace of the fulfilled moment. On the one hand, it occurs in the tiny time differences, in the rubato with which the pianist repeatedly makes herself independent of the orchestra, and on the other hand, in breathing together with the orchestra, in the repeated dialogue with individual orchestra soloists. In this interplay, Beethoven becomes so alive that Ott can even play the dead-beat “Für Elise” for the encore because she finds her own way to do it in the moment.
Perhaps it was inspired by the previous opening with the prelude and fugue “The Spitfire” by William Walton, which the orchestra, currently on tour in Europe, unabashedly blared into the hall as a fanfare. For a year now, the CBSO has been led by Kazuki Yamada, who succeeds, among others, Simon Rattle as chief conductor.
In Birmingham, the orchestra is currently having to accept significant cuts; the city soon wants to completely cancel its subsidy. There is no sign of this in Munich, not even in Edward Elgar’s “Enigma Variations”, which follow Beethoven after the break, another repertoire classic and a typical touring piece by a British orchestra. You’ve probably heard more sophisticated, more profound interpretations of them than Yamada offers. But the Japanese lets his orchestra play music so directly, so directly, so joyfully that you don’t miss them at any moment. Before the encore with Elgar’s “Salut d’amour” there is a greeting of love from Birmingham, which the Munich audience returns with enthusiasm.