By Klaus P. Richter, Munich
When Rudolf Buchbinder and Beethoven meet, sovereign skill and solid brio are guaranteed. Especially in Munich, where Buchbinder is part of the classic folklore. But this time there were also top-class musicians from the British Isles in the Isarphilharmonie. With the London Symphony Orchestra he played Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto, which the English call “Emperor”, although it was written by the Austrian patriot Beethoven against Napoleon. But Buchbinder played the imperial gesture with expressive bravura, after the virtuoso cadence increasingly in mental unison with the orchestra, up to the rapid fortefortissmo of the coda of the first movement.
Maestro Gianandrea Noseda, a highly energetic conducting activist with the most intense will to create, provided the Italian glow in the brio. All the more impressive then is his ability to internalize the soul tone of the adagio. With him Buchbinder savored the arcane B major of the chorale-like main theme and its sublime melos before the attacca went into the sonata rondo of the furious finale. What always gets so much praise as the fabulous “transparency” of the hall could, however, also be perceived as an analytical presence sound with little spatial fullness. This is why the Steinway often sounded quite brittle in the treble.
That was irrelevant for Shostakovich’s 15th symphony. It is his last symphonic summary between exhilarated clowning with garish scherzo gestures and dark silhouettes, with quotations from Rossini and Wagner and a passacaglia that no longer has any of the old confidence of the baroque genre, but appears as an agonizing straitjacket. But here, too, Noseda managed to convince with the orchestra in sensitive piano, devout cello solos and magical brass episodes. encores from both.