Right from the start, Beethoven’s “Egmont” overture, a piece with a certain drama anyway, becomes an exclamation mark under the baton of Elim Chan. She conjures up the opening chord centered in the orchestra. After that she goes into dynamic extremes and popping effects. This works because the conductor, who was born in Hong Kong in 1986, is extremely precise with the BR Symphony Orchestra in the Hercules Hall. The inserts, the volume – everything is trimmed with cutting precision to target and effect.
With Rudolf Buchbinder, however, she then almost gets a kind of opponent. The orchestral opening of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C minor, KV 491, still sounds like Egmont. First an occupied string sound, then in the repetition radiant brilliance as if at the push of a button. But then Buchbinder sets in, establishes a clear but restrained tone, and plays the runs modestly. Rely on elegance and sparkling sound.
In the second movement, the orchestra and soloist come together better: Buchbinder plays with simple beauty. Chan lets the orchestra act like a natural amplifier. And in the final, too, Buchbinder shows with a great bouncing but never intrusive touch that he doesn’t have to prove anything anymore. But the conflict between Chan’s effective conducting and Buchbinder’s stylistic elegance is never completely resolved.
Because Elim Chan is looking for something different musically than Buchbinder. Finally, in Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 2, she exhibits this again in its entirety. Rely on dynamics and precision with the utmost accuracy. Crescendi run almost spatially through the orchestra. The individual voices lie transparently one on top of the other, and she always lets it bang at exactly the most effective moment. No wallowing, little breath, even in meter, Chan whips up beat and tempo. It’s sometimes a bit exhausting, but despite the density of effects, it’s never kitschy, but extremely modern.