Seductive Scheherazade, swift Rachmaninov P/C 3

After an absence of a few years, the MPO under Claus Peter Flor revisited Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. In the initial opening years, it was over-programmed by the MPO's first MD, Kees Bakels. We assumed that after the first few years of developing the core repertoire, the MPO would branch out and play other fringe repertoire like the same composer's magnificent Russian Easter Festival Overture. After 15 years, we'd still not heard a performance of the latter. If the MPO can record that piece for BIS (BIS CD 1387), I don't see why it cannot be played at the DFP hall.

Nevertheless, the performance on Saturday night (23 June 2012) was a lovely and loving affair - with magnificent solo performances from concertmaster Markus Gundermann (depiciting Scheherazade herself), the guest principal cellist Eliah Sakakushev, principal flautist Hristo Dobrino and co-principal clarinettist Marcel Luxen especially.

This was the highlight of the evening, despite the performance of Rachmaninov's Third Piano Concerto by regular guest soloist Stephen Hough. Hough and Flor seemed to be content to let the whole piano concerto whiz by in flash - as if they were both catching the midnight flight out of Kuala Lumpur. Co-ordination between orchestra and piano was at times very iffy and the whole performance seemed very garbled indeed.

My negative feelings about the concerto were also compounded by the fact that the DFP have also programmed the Rachmaninov Third Concerto on countless number of occasions. I am sure that Hough has many piano concertos in his repertoire (as shown by his extensive CD output on Hyperion). Surely, he could be persuaded to perform St Saens or Tchaikovsky's Third Piano Concerto or some obscure (but delightful) Hummel Piano Concertos instead.

The audience thought his performance as superb and some of them gave him a standing ovation. The ovation brought about an unannounced encore - in the shape of Carl Engel's Sea Shell.