Press
18. 01. 2016
Energetic Depth of Focus
The ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna under Conductor Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla
Vienna. What is more interesting – the works, or the interpreter’s approach? What should be more important when mediocre works are played gorgeously? The program of the RSO Vienna was one to inspire such questions: thus, Mieczyslav Weinberg’s Suite No. 4 (from the ballet The Golden Key) offers a round of characteristic scenes, brilliantly fabricated, but of limited originality in its ideas: the grotesque tone, ironic neo-classicism, elegiac melodiousness – all that, Weinberg had mastered. However, he usually stuck to predictable patterns.
In the case of the young Alexander Scriabin’s Piano Concerto, things are the other way round: although he also hews closely to classical-romantic forms, the three movements abound with inspired ideas. The orchestration, however, remains somewhat flat at times. Soloist Anika Vavic, on the other hand, came to her part with verve and gave it a clearly-contoured presence, not superficially brilliant, but full of energy and a full, creamy tone, which also pervaded her encore – Fragilité from Scriabin’s Four Pieces Op. 51. […]
(Daniel Ender, 17.1.2016)
Translation: Alexa Nieschlag
