Music review: The Würth Philharmonic & Maxim Vengerov
The Würth Philharmonic & Maxim Vengerov, Usher Hall, Edinburgh, ****
Vengerov provided a starry conclusion to the Usher Hall’s Sunday Classics season with the recently formed Würth Philharmonic, demonstrating both facets of his musical personality as violinist and conductor in a single show. (Stamatia Karampini conducted for the first half.) The Saint-Saëns Introduction and rondo capriccioso that followed the Bruch felt like a programmed encore (although Vengerov supplied a solo encore of his own – a luxuriant Sarabande from Bach’s Second Partita), and here, too, he gave even the composer’s flashiest violin pyrotechnics a strong sense of purpose.
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Hide AdAfter the interval, Vengerov was on the podium to conduct a Shostakovich Tenth Symphony that was surprisingly brisk and agile, though vividly characterised and never lacking seriousness of intent – especially in its driving, brutal, Stalin scherzo, but also in the third movement’s coolly intoned horn calls, unreciprocated appeals to a distant beloved. There were some fleeting ensemble issues among the Würth players, and a sense that they were yet to find their proper blend and balance between sections – not to mention worryingly few female faces among the band’s ranks. But this was a commanding, memorably spine-tingling performance nonetheless.