Liza Ferschtman's brilliant Brahms Concerto performance

Liza Ferschtman's second visit to the DFP Hall on 31 May 2014 brought the magnificent Brahms Violin Concerto as her solo offering. Outgoing MPO Music Director, Claus Peter Flor conducted his last performance with the orchestra. The Beethoven Violin Concerto was Ferschtman's solo concerto in her previous outing with the MPO. This proved to be a slightly nervous affair. The Brahms Violin Concerto this time was a musical performance, played with quite secure technical conviction and expressive phrasing, with measured speeds used in the first two movements. Apart from a sluggish start to the concerto's first movement by Flor, the conductor worked well with Ferschtman to give one of the loveliest performances of the concerto ever heard in the DFP Hall. The other great performances of the Brahms Concerto were given by Kavakos and Joshua Bell. A negative point about the performance was the use of the Fritz Kreisler cadenza for the first movement. A more appropriate cadenza would have been the Joachim (Joachim was the dedicatee of the concerto). Ferschtman's fabled technical security was below the fearsome technical demands required of Kreisler's cadenza. Simon Emes phrased a lovely cantilena for the second movement's glorious oboe solo. The mood changed drastically in the Hungarian sounding third movement, when Ferschtman, Flor and the MPO used a generally faster tempo here. With the sustained applause, Ferschtman obliged the audience with an encore - JS Bach's Sarabande from the D minor Solo Partita BWV 1004. In the second half, we witnessed a generally neurotic performance by Flor of Tchaikovsky's "Pathétique" Symphony. The first and fourth movements were not subtle, with the brass players generally swamping the rest of the orchestra. The second movement was fairly elegantly played, but the third movement (the March) was ridiculously hasty and the orchestral articulation was very poor. Thus, Flor ended his MPO tenure with a series of neurotic and unmusical performances - so unlike his excellent work with the orchestra initially.