A hasty Italian tour

The concert of 22 Sep (entitled "Images of Italy") was well programmed - in terms of its musical content. However, it proved to be a hasty affair and could have been better in terms of the soloist used for the Paganini 2nd violin concerto. The concert commenced with Rossini's Semiramide Overture. This proved to be a slightly lack-lustre affair as some of the newer musicians of the MPO were getting acquainted in concert. Ensemble-wise and tonally, there will be lots for MD Claus Peter Flor to do before he can restore the glorious sound the MPO were making before this season began. Rossini's overture owes some debt to the Mannheim school of composers (famous for their perpetual crescendo in their orchestral pieces). This is where the MPO failed in its collective crescendo that can make Rossini's curtain raiser more exciting than usual. New concert-mistress Anna Reszniak then emerged to perform Paganini's 2nd violin concerto in a DFP premiere performance of the opus. This was generally a very technically secure but swift performance. The double stopping and artificial harmonics held no terrors here. However, she showed no love for the piece and was just mechanically attuned to it only. The audience still loved her performance and she gave an encore (Paganini's 5th caprice Op 1). Again this was swiftly and technically well dispatched. If I were to take issue with the encore, Reszniak played the fast "moto perpetuo" section using an "up and down" spiccato bowing motion whilst Paganini wrote it as "3 down bow" and "1 up bow" for each semiquaver set of 4. After the interval, Flor gave us another hasty performance of Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony which did not have any pauses between the 4 movements. The tempos adopted in the 1st movement varied drastically from section to section (and almost "Furtwangler-ish" in nature). I found this to be highly disconcerting indeed. The other movements were fairly well played but again, Flor seemed to be very business-like in his conducting and seemed anxious to make a swift exit from the hall.