Striking the right notes

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The Gala Concert at Dewan Filharmonik Petronas last week proved to be a flourishing start to the new season.

EVEN after more than 30 years of listening to classical music, I find that I’m still discovering new gems in unsuspected corners of the classical world.

Take last weekend’s Gala Concert at Dewan Filharmonik Petronas, for example. When I saw Mozart’s Concerto For Three Pianos In F on the programme, my initial thinking was spectacle rather than musically spectacular.

By the time I left Saturday evening’s concert, however, I had changed my mind. Not only was the stage less crowded than I expected – even after fitting in the three pianos – the music was even more inventive and delightful than I thought it would be.

Riveting rhapsody: (from left) Bobby Chen, Foo Mei Yi and Tengku Ahmad Irfan performing Mozart’s Concerto For Three Pianos In F with MPO music director Claus Peter Flor and the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra.

Granted, the concerto, which closed the evening’s programme, might lack the depth and insight of Mozart’s later works – he was all of 20 when he composed it in 1776 – however, it still resonated with its wit, delicacy and striking melodies.

What I particularly enjoyed was how the piano sections developed: like a conversation, the music moved from one pianist to another, bantering, teasing and supporting, picking up threads of melodies from one and expanding before passing them on.

The delicious repartee, a tricky act as it requires plenty of concentration, came across so fluently in the hands of the all-Malaysian trio of Bobby Chen, Foo Mei Yi and Tengku Ahmad Irfan that you would not have known that this was the first time they have performed the concerto.

Their playing was precise and fluid and their evident pleasure in the music – and each other’s company – was enjoyably transmitted to an appreciative audience, who also took patriotic pride in the local talent on stage.

The Mozart alone was certainly worth the price of admission but a close run for its money came in the first half of the concert with Prokofiev’s contribution to the piano concerto repertoire.

Dissonant, jagged and percussive, Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No.1 is not for the faint-hearted. Often, the orchestra and soloist, Bobby Chen in this case, seem to be at odds with each other, going their own ways and wandering into seemingly culs-de-sac of a musical kind.

Yet, the concerto has amazingly rich textures that reward a closer hearing. Personally, though, I thought the audience that evening was more bemused rather than entertained by what it heard.

More’s the pity, as the concerto was exquisitely performed, with Chen producing a tour de force in, sometimes literally, hammering out a finely judged and amazingly dexterous reading of the work.

Further exploration of the piano concerto repertoire came from Bach’s Concerto For Two Pianos In C Minor, a transcription of his Concerto For Two Violins In D Minor BWV1043.

Musically, I found the Bach the weakest of the three concertos performed that night. Bach had originally transcribed the work for harpsichords and I felt the pianos lacked the sharpness in tone to stand out against the accompanying orchestra, especially in the first movement where they were all but drowned out.

Nonetheless, there was more to appreciate in the second movement when there was minimal orchestral input; here, Foo Mei Yi and Tengku Ahmad Irfan were more forward, displaying a nicely developed partnership to produce enticingly languid music.

While the soloists excelled in their own ways, praise also goes to the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Claus Peter Flor.

A curious incident aside, when Flor nearly started the Bach concerto before the double basses strolled in, the MPO and its music director were sympathetic throughout as they offered flawless support to the pianists.

They even set the tone for the evening by kicking off the concert with a splendid account of Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony – a glorious opening, taut and precise, scurrying violins chasing each other, and a crystalline second, with the brass popping up here and there, among the highlights.

The Gala Concert, which marked the opening of DFP’s new 2011/12 Season, hit plenty of the right notes for me – intriguing programming, dazzling piano playing and the reassuring solid MPO, were just the right ingredients to make DFP’s 14th season a memorable one.