Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Adelaide Town Hall. 23 May 2014
It has been said that as the K2 is to mountaineers, so is the ‘Rach 3’ to pianists. The K2 has claimed victims in the worst possible way, and Rachmaninov’s ‘Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor’ claimed David Helfgott if the 1996 film ‘Shine’ is to be fully believed, but brilliant Uzbek pianist Behozod Abduraimov withstood all that the Rach 3 hurled at him and he was victorious and triumphant.
The biographical notes about Abduraimov in the programme feature the word ‘début’ a lot, but it would be a mistake to think this signals he is merely a new talent. There is nothing immature or untested in Abduraimov’s armoury of technique and interpretation. This young man plays with the technical assurance and artistry of someone much older than his tender twenty-four years, and it is astonishing to think that he is at the start of his career. His potential is awesome, and some have suggested he may well be the new Vladimir Horowitz.
Guest conductor Martyn Brabbins gave Abduraimov an avuncular wink just before he started the concerto as if to say ‘you’ll be right’ and the next forty minutes were spellbinding. Abduraimov sat very close to the Steinway’s keyboard, with his head almost directly over his hands, and demonstrated considerable forearm strength as he looked down at his hands and willed them to do the near impossible that is demanded by the fearsome Rach 3. He occasionally sat back to give himself room for the complex overlapping figures and delicate arpeggios, and occasionally he turned the pages of the score but he rarely referred to it, if ever (a security blanket, perhaps?). He dazzled us with his tightly controlled but bravura execution of the vast and dramatic cadenzas. They surely exact a physical as well as a mental price, and the Steinway visibly rocked and swayed at times, but Abduraimov seemed unscathed as he fed off the pure energy of the piece and he seemed to get even stronger and more dramatic. Was he channelling Liszt? With the final crashing chord the audience erupted into spontaneous applause, cheers and even wolf-whistles as they rose to their feet and remained so for fully five minutes. It was like being at a pop concert. It was exhilarating, and after Abduraimov left the stage for the last time with his score that he held up to the audience as a salute to the composer, the audience went to the interval gob smacked.
The concert was bookended by compositions by English composers, but they didn’t exhilarate the audience as did the Rachmaninov. ‘Overture: St Francis of Assisi’ by Peter Maxwell Davies and ‘Symphony No. 1’ by William Walton are both episodic and anguished pieces and markedly contrasted with the uber romantic and melodic Rach 3. The Overture was packed with interest and Brabbins tightly controlled the ASO through challenging metres and rapidly changing orchestral colours, and the stridency of the final bars sent a tingle down the spine. Brabbins clearly has an intimate knowledge of Walton’s First and he extracted everything that it had to offer. It is immensely popular with Britons, but antipodean audiences are much less enthralled with it.
The night belonged to Rachmaninov and Abduraimov, with superb support from Brabbins and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
