ロンドンでのコンサート評

http://www.seenandheard-international.com/2011/05/26/not-quite-an-earth/

Not quite earthshaking:Saporro Orchestra at Royal Festival Hall perfromance

Takemitsu, Bruch, Shostakovich Akiko Suwanai (violin); Sapporo Symphony Orchestra/Tadaaki Otaka. Royal Festival Hall London, 23.5. 2011 (CC)

Takemitsu: How Slow the Wind
Bruch: Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47

A stimulating programme from the Sapporo orchestra (an orchestra founded in 1961 ? as the Sapporo Citizen Symphony and renamed in the next year).
This was a concert “given in aid of the Japanese Red Cross Society and the Japan Society Tohoku Earthquake Relief Fund”
? a poignant event, therefore, providing the setting for Takemitsu’s 1991 piece How Slow the Wind (the title comes from an Emily Dickinson poem).
The strings managed creditably with Takemitsu’s glacial fragility and Debussy-influenced lines. It was a brave way to begin, and the players pulled it off.

Akiko Suwanai has in the past proved herself a fine musician, but the Bruch did not find her in finest fettle.
Against the background of a hyper-disciplined orchestra, one marveled at her accuracy, her sweet, spot-on high register and, indeed,
the sheer volume of her playing. And therein, in the last of the list, lay the problem: subtlety was not much in evidence.
The melody of the central Adagio was hardly vocal, and perfect trills hardly compensate.
Neither did Suwanai and Otaka work in partnership to effect anything like a shattering climax with the great horn theme. Even the usually unstoppable
momentum of the finale was not quite realised.