EIF music reviews: NYO2 Prokofiev 5 | María Dueñas and Alexander Malofeev

NYO2 Prokofiev 5

Usher Hall

★★★★☆

Kickstarting their festival residency with a meaty programme, Carnegie Hall’s NYO2 orchestra for 14- to 17-year-olds oozed confidence and dynamism under the baton of conductor Rafael Payare. Jimmy López’s Perú Negro with its vibrant modern framing of Afro-Peruvian music was an ideal opener to showcase this 100+ strong orchestra. A lively brass fanfare set things going but eventually gave way to drum-driven rhythms that swept the music along in a giddy wake of boisterous climaxes.

A graduate of Venezuela’s El Sistema project, Payare impressed with his meticulous attention to detail especially in Prokofiev’s fifth symphony. Premiered in 1945, the work was conceived during the horrors of world war two, and there was plenty of suitable bite to the strings and fiery salvos from the brass and percussion.

However in Shostakovich’s first cello concerto there were times when the orchestra were often out of step with soloist Alisa Weilerstein. The opening movement was rushed leaving the cellist with little room for artistic nuances and in the more exposed passages of the allegro marcato the orchestra tended to overwhelm Weilerstein’s quieter, reflective tone. There was a better balance in the busy finale with the musicians revelling in its exuberance.

SUSAN NICKALLS

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MUSIC

María Dueñas and Alexander Malofeev

Queen’s Hall

★★★★☆

While Storm Floris was whipping up winds outside the Queen’s Hall, there was no shortage of tempestuousness inside courtesy of the whirlwind of a recital from Spanish violinist María Dueñas and Russian pianist Alexander Malofeev Szymanowski.

Debussy and Franck didn’t make for the friendliest of programmes, my neighbour remarked. Maybe not, but these were clearly pieces both musicians felt passionately about, and their performances – not so much demanding to be heard as shouting from the rooftops – were big, bold, loud and forthright as a result.

Especially so in their opening Szymanowski Sonata, which they attacked with quite astonishing vigour and determination, though Dueñas reined in her vehemence somewhat for the Debussy Sonata that followed, more limpid and mercurial, even if she somewhat passed over the final movement’s euphoric outbursts in her desire to surge ever forward.

Calmer still – though still simmering on quite a high gas – was the pair’s closing Franck Sonata, whose finale felt like the concert’s first expression of joy and buoyancy. Though Malofeev’s strongly defined playing could occasionally verge on the clangorous, Dueñas is a phenomenal performer with a fiery technique to match her deeply passionate interpretations – both evident in the duo’s brilliant encore, Piazzolla’s appropriately named Yo soy María.

DAVID KETTLE

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