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Fine start to birthday celebrations

By Nick Kimberley, Evening Standard  22.02.07
 
Old school: Colin Davis' Mozart has majesty

Old school: Colin Davis' Mozart has majesty

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The Barbican's 25th birthday falls in March; a Mozart concerto with Mitsuko Uchida, one of the greatest of Mozart pianists, and Colin Davis, a an old school Mozartian conductor is no bad way to start the party.

Uchida chose Mozart's Piano Concerto No13, one of three he wrote to show that he could please both "connoisseurs" and "the common listener".

While Davis's Mozart has majesty, Uchida's effervesces. There were moments in solo passages where impish freedom threatened to become wilfulness, but her timing and delicacy are breathtaking; the syncopation at the opening of the final movement encapsulated all Mozart in a few fleeting moments.

James MacMillan's The Confession of Isobel Gowdie is hardly Davis's home turf, but his sense of musical space served it well.

The London Symphony Orchestra did a decent job of roughing up its sound in a work which is essentially an essay in building tension through long, slow phrases, then releasing it in a fury of brass and percussion.

If you remain unmoved, it becomes a series of empty gestures; succumb, and it achieves real catharsis.

To see Davis conduct Dvorak's Sixth Symphony, few would believe he turns 80 this year. A performance that clocks in at 50 minutes is not rushed, but his tempos felt organic, inevitable.

Not that everything was expansive: the wild gallop of the Scherzo had an urgency that brooked no argument, and Davis never sacrificed vigour for the sake of sounding merely beautiful.

Repeated tonight; Beethoven replaces MacMillan. Information: 020 7638 8891.

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