IT IS no bad reflection on the Hallé Orchestra that the highlight of this concert involved just seven of its players, plus its music director Mark Elder and the evening’s soloist, Lars Vogt. Rather it is a reflection on the extraordinarily original genius of Janácek, whose rarely heard Capriccio for piano left hand, flute and brass sextet made this an occasion to remember. Although the Hallé sounded superlative at full strength elsewhere, this interlude showed an adventurousness in programming that other orchestras would do well to emulate.
Capriccio is one of Janácek’s most idiosyncratic works, which is saying something. It dates from the last years of the composer’s life, when he was commissioned by the war-wounded pianist Otakar Hollman to help to enlarge the meagre left-hand repertory. There is not just bittersweetness but bitterness here, not surprising considering that Janácek originally entitled it Defiance. It is as if the wounded soldier of the piano is set against a group of military instruments, while the flute mediates on behalf of the keyboard and its player.
A noted chamber musician, Vogt was in his element, producing an amazing richness of sound with just one hand. Strong cross-rhythms at the opening gave way to flurries of notes, and there was also a wistfulness in the suggestion of long-forgotten dances.
Vogt’s main task of the evening was Prokofiev’s First Piano Concerto, where his muscular performance matched the big sweep of the orchestra. The real key to this formidable piece is enjoyment of Prokofiev’s enfant terrible antics, and Vogt revelled in every challenge. This was the work with which the composer established his voice, which also means there is a certain emptiness of rhetoric that no performance can quite disguise.
Counterbalancing this was Rachmaninov’s last work, the magnificent Symphonic Dances. Full of wisdom yet still fresh, this score was his only completely American piece, but it taps deep into his Russian past in the great waltz of the middle movement and the death-haunted finale. Elder shaped everything with assurance: the melting alto saxophone solo registered as vividly as the full orchestra, by turns delicate and powerful.
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Even though this danceinfused programme had a Slavonic accent, Dukas’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice was not out of place. Included partly for the schoolchildren with whom the Hallé has been working, it sounded like something out of a Russian fairytale, but then Elder’s performance pointed up Dukas’s debt to Rimsky-Korsakov and his colourful world.