[LJ2ME] October Fest 7 of 12: SSO Rozhdestvensky
Having a triple bill of guest soloists is a rare treat offered when perhaps the Beethoven Triple Concerto or Brahms Double Concerto is on the programme. To gild the lily, imagine if you will an esteemed and pedigreed family gracing the stage and you have the evening's events. Distinguished conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky with pianist wife Viktoria Postnikova and violinist son Sasha presented Mendelssohn's Concerto for Piano and Violin where the jaunty and martial theme was tossed off with aplomb, albeit all with score in sight. For the encore, Schnittke's Polka was offered, where fellow countryman, concert master Alexander Souptel smiled beamingly as he gallantly and valiantly rushed to rescue the sheet music which the breeze sent off the stand. The piece de resistance in Brahms' Fourth Symphony was a revelatory sound voyage that plumbed the depths of the music. The maestro invested a personal connection with the work, leading an expansively pregnant reading with economy of movement and facility of expression that teased with the grandiloquent opening to the surreal second and boisterous third movements before closing with the quasi-religious Passacaglia finale. The raucous and rapturous reception was fully deserved.