Ray Chen in a stunning Symphonie Espagnole.

Okko Kamu's concert with the MPO opened with a somnolently paced Ravel's Pavane pour une infante défunte. At Kamu's restrained and funereal tempo, the MPO were uncomfortable at maintaining Ravel's long melodic lines of the work's recurring theme and the interpretation lacked a consummate dreaminess.

The full-capacity concert hall sparked to life as Ray Chen returned to the DFP to present Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole. Chen's tone had plenty of weight in the opening movement that was full of dark and sultry utterances on passages that were high up the mellow G-string of his superb Kurt Widenhouse violin of 2008. His softer playing in the second subject radiated a hushed intensity which entranced the audience. Chen spun a silky cantabile line for the opening and central sections of the second Scherzando movement, whilst maintaining taut rhythms in the swift linking triplet passages. The MPO, Kamu and Chen established the ideal mood for the Spanish-Moorish influenced habanera rhythms of the Intermezzo third movement.

Chen’s soft dynamics captured a mood of repose and found the emotional heart of the concerto in the lovely Andante which gained an elegiac wistfulness as he ascended to the high D, in a hushed but magical transformation to the tonic major. Chen’s impeccable technique carried off the final Rondo with abundant panache and aplomb as the lightness of his touch on his lovely spiccato bowing, his nimble runs and arpeggios, impeccable broken octaves and laughing trills brought Lalo's magnificent opus to a rousing conclusion.

After tumultuous applause, Chen presented the audience with two encores. The first was the opening movement of Ysaye's Solo Sonata Op 27 No 2 (Obsession), which was dedicated to Ysaye's violinist friend, Jacques Thibaud. Chen's favourite Paganini Caprice No 21, with its singing double-stops and fiendish up-bow staccato was his second coruscating encore.

Kamu and the MPO treated us to a lovely performance of Dvorak's genial Eighth Symphony after the interval. From the melancholic opening tune of the MPO cellos and the lovely flute solo by Dakota Martin, there was subtlety of dynamics and phrasing and drama in the gloriously melodious first movement. Charm characterized the pastoral second movement, with appealing dialogue passages from the principal flute, oboe and clarinet players and a luscious violin solo from Peter Danis.

Kamu caught the third movement's lilting mood and melodic lines impeccably, with the MPO violins coaxing a most alluring portamento and a well-played Trio from the woodwinds of idyllic grace. Almost without a break, an energetic trumpet fanfare heralded the fourth movement. The cellos recollected the material from the first movement, before Kamu built the symphony to a boisterous and exciting conclusion replete with folksy abandon.

MPO 20th anniversary special concerts for 2018

The MPO 20th anniversary season promises many special concerts from top conductors and soloists exclusively chosen for the remainder of 2018. Renowned pianist Stephen Hough performs Rachmaninov's evergreen Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini with conductor Mark Wigglesworth in a classic concert entitled Russian Rhapsody.

Mark Wigglesworth also leads a concert which juxtaposes Alban Berg's heart-rending Violin Concerto, with the stellar violin soloist James Ehnes and Sibelius' sunny Second Symphony.

Rising violinist Ray Chen makes a welcome return to the DFP in a colourful concert of Lalo's Symphonie espagnole and Dvorak's rustic Eighth Symphony, led by the veteran Finnish conductor, Okko Kamu. Another popular returning artist to KL is the electric harpist Leonard Jacome with Venezuelan harp offerings and Rachmaninov's romantic Second Symphony.

The perennial favourite conductor Robert Abbado offers us Carl Orff's epic choral spectacular Carmina Burana, prefaced by Haydn's Symphony No 103 ("Drumroll"), whilst the emerging Stanislav Kochanovsky also returns to delight us with two Romantic German third symphonies of Schumann and Brahms.

Making his debut here in KL at the DFP, Roberto González-Monjas directs Vivaldi's The Four Seasons from the violin and then leads the MPO in Mussorgsky's evocative Pictures at an Exhibition. Britain's premier historically informed orchestra, The Orchestra of The Age of Enlightenment (OAE) also makes an appearance at the DFP under the banner of the Toyota Classics.

On a lighter musical note, Billy Joel's protégé Michael Cavanaugh plays and sings the music of his mentor with the MPO, whilst the elegant "live" band Pink Martini with the sultry lead singer China Forbes also entertain us in their multilingual songs from around the world.

The 2018 MPO anniversary season promises many concerts of varied fare, with great artists in wonderful repertoire. For further information, visit www.mpo.com.my or call (03) 2331 7007.

Ray Chen in a brilliant Beethoven Violin Concerto performance

Beethoven’s incidental music to King Stephen, Op 117 was commissioned to mark the opening of the Hungarian Theatre in Pest in 1811. The lively overture is characterised by Magyar themes primarily in the winds, with colourful orchestral effects.

Although the overture is rarely performed, it served as a Hungarian-spiced space-filler to the violin concerto highlight of this all-Beethoven MPO concert led by the Hungarian conductor Gábor Takács-Nagy on 22 October 2016.

27-year old violinist Ray Chen then made memorable his DFP debut. Takács-Nagy launched the opening tutti in an unashamedly grand symphonic manner. How was this slight young man, calmly holding the 1715 Strad that once belonged to the great Joseph Joachim, ever going to rise above such a big orchestral sound? But from his first broken octave entry, Ray Chen’s playing was heart stopping.

With maestro Takács-Nagy’s sensitive conducting and judicious terracing of the orchestral dynamics, Chen’s playing in the first movement combined sensitive and melodious phrasing of the cantabile portions allied with virile bowing in the running semiquavers.

This was a traditional interpretation of the first movement, with a slight slowing in the G minor development section and a corresponding speeding up in the broken octave triple passage leading up to the requisite original tempo for the recapitulation.

Chen’s talents were firmly at the service of the music and every aspect of his performance showed intense focus and concentration. Opting to play Auer’s cadenzas (edited by Heifetz and Rosand), he delivered them with incisive brilliance and profound musicality. The restatement of the principal theme in the first movement coda was particularly moving before its vigorous conclusion.

In the calm second movement, his playing was ethereal and sublime, tempered with sensitive and narrow vibrato. The brisk tempo in the Rondo finale was sustained with varied detache and spiccato bow strokes as well as subtle changes in tonal colour and nuances inflected by clever use of the bow. At the triumphal conclusion, Takács-Nagy and the MPO musicians were as rapturous as the audience in their applause of the soloist.

This was a Beethoven Violin Concerto performance to be reckoned with, and Chen followed it up with two amazing encores, Paganini's Caprice No 21 in A major Op 1 and JS Bach’s Gavotte et Rondeau from the Third Solo Partita in E major BWV1006.

After thanking the capacity audience for such warm welcome, Chen’s Paganini was stunning in its lyrical execution of the singing sixths, with the reprise of the tune on the lower and upper strings given a more intense and wider vibrato. The coruscating clear up-bow staccato in the finale was dazzling in Chen’s dextrous execution. The Bach was light and dancing in character with judicious voicing of its complex melodious double-stops.

Maestro Takács-Nagy offered a very good interpretation of the Pastoral Symphony after the interval with excellently judged tempi and fine playing from the MPO in the first two movements.

However, in the third movement that is marked only Allegro by Beethoven, Takács-Nagy made a questionable tempo decision to play the beginning of the movement at almost Prestissimo and the MPO players had great trouble keeping up. A resultant massive slowing down (which again ran contrary to Beethoven’s marking of sempre piu stretto before the 2/4 time “drone” section) was not in keeping with the score.

The “storm” of the fourth movement was vicious in its execution, but unfortunately the pastoral fifth movement was marred by a very badly out of tune MPO horn solo in bars 5-8. Otherwise, maestro Takács-Nagy’s interpretation was very good and most of the MPO played very well.

The evening however belonged to Ray Chen, who gave the large numbers of the capacity audience autographs during the interval and after the concert. Since coming first in the Menuhin and Queen Elisabeth competitions in 2008 and 2009 respectively, he has had a glittering career. He possesses a phenomenal technique, a virile and silvery tone reminiscent of Nathan Milstein in his heyday, a judiciously fast and tastefully judged vibrato and a creamy legato. Chen is no longer a competition winner but a fully-fledged violinist in the uppermost echelon of his profession playing today.