Sarah Chang disappoints, Hugh Wolff shines

Hugh Wolff made his MPO conducting debut on 28 February 2015 with a most appealing programme. Two Russian pieces flanked the violin concerto offering. The opening piece was a short 4 minute oeuvre from Stravinsky entitled Fireworks. Perhaps the MPO was not familiar with the piece and there were some apparent ensemble difficulties. A capacity crowd were at the DFP to watch Sarah Chang play the Dvorak Violin Concerto. Previously, she had offered the Bruch First Violin Concerto in her last concert in KL. The Dvorak Violin Concerto seemed a great change from the Bruch. The performance of the Dvorak was disappointing to say the least. The 2 opening solo flourishes in the first movement sounded cautious and tentative. Worse was to come as her fabled left hand technique failed her in many places. Her intonation was generally poor and often sharp. The vibrato was generally one dimensional - fast, unyielding and frequently causing the sharp intonation to stray even sharper. The bowing was also heavy and harsh and Chang strained to extract extra tone that her poor 1717 Guarneri del Gesu was not able to produce.

Often, her rhythm was also compressed due to her obvious technical insecurities, amounting to rushing into passages that caused her difficulties. She frequently ended up ahead of the orchestra, when a tutti emerged. Not many portions caused me to delight in her playing. Perhaps letter M in the second movement (in the IMC score, edited by Ivan Galamian) was delightful in its repose. Dvorak probably rolled in his grave as Chang butchered the rhythms in the third movement and destroyed his delicate Czech cross-rhythms. In view of this recent extremely poor showing, Chang probably should stop concertising, take a sabbatical to re-work her technique and re-study the music she plays. Whilst taking the sabbatical, she should also shop around for a much superior violin with wider hall projection than her present one.

The second half was much better as the MPO and Wolff gave a controlled performance of the Shostakovich Symphony No 10. A very good and gripping performance overall, marred by poor horn playing (with the usual splattering of broken notes and poor ensemble) and a very bronchial audience in the third movement.