As noticed the same day, to the RFH on 14th May to hear Mozart's 25th piano concerto and Mahler's 1st symphony, piano by Louis Lortie and conducted by Charles Dutoit. Which made it a family occasion with my mother being largely brought up in Montreal, Lortie being born there and Dutoit, while French Swiss, put in a very successful, twenty year stint with the principal orchestra there, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (OSM).
Opened the evening with a visit to the Hole in the Wall at Waterloo, where for the second time running, I happened to sit next to another long-service patron, from which we deduce that the place must have a significant following of same. This particular patron was attracted by its relatively low prices and appeared to be alternating rough and smooth cider, the former being the trademark tipple of the place in days of yore.
The Mozart was as good as expected, although I thought there were a number of wrong notes from the piano. The chap next to me thought that what I was hearing was the effect of excessive pedaling, resulting in the blurring of the offending notes. He may well have been right, but too deep for me to rule on.
The Mahler was something of a departure for me, having focused very much on chamber music in recent years, in part because it does not sound as silly in one's house as orchestral music: fancy electronics cannot completely overcome the lack of space for the sound to swill around in, at least not that sort of sound. But splendid stuff just the same, with the orchestration all that it had been cracked up to be - not least because the RPO deployed a big orchestra involving, for example, eight French horns and ten cellos. Plus a harp which, following the piano concerto, made oddly piano like interventions. Although perhaps not so odd, with the harp being just a thinly stringed & open plan version of the grand piano.
It had been explained that the Schoenberg heard on 12th April did what it did with the Brahms by spreading the piano part around the orchestra. A few bars here to the oboe, a few bars there to the trombones and so on. Well the Mahler struck me in rather the same way, a concerto for instrument X, where the value of X moved around during the proceedings, rather than being locked down to just one value, the piano in the case of the Mozart.
It also struck me as a piece from south central rather than north central Europe. A bit more joie de vivre than one would get from us more solemn northerners. A bit more fun, some deliberate and jolly vulgarity. More than a hint of the wedding music from Godfather One.
Third movement terrific with a terrific opener from percussion and (mainly) double bass. Maybe I should set it down for my own funeral; a good bit of tongue-in-cheek pomposity. With thanks to YouTube for a reprise from Chicago, only marred by the opening advertisement - an advertisement which pays for the piper, as it were. But a rather better rendering, with headphones on the PC, than I get from my ancient record from RCA Victor, also from Chicago as it happens, without on the hifi.
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