
There is no doubt that Hélène Grimaud is a pianist possessed of an unassailable technique and a fearless, risk-taking disposition. Yet, despite her fascination for wolves, she is far from a pack animal; and, despite the scale of Brahms’s B flat Piano Concerto, this score requires a soloist very much in touch with his or her inner chamber musician. With the piano part folded into proceedings from the very start, there’s an extraordinary process at work of orchestra and pianist defining, anchoring and almost grooming each other, and also acting as a sort of mutual corrective.

Nelsons has been an orchestral trumpeter, which must give an insider’s edge to his conducting; also, like his fellow Latvian and mentor Mariss Jansons, his style is unobtrusively extrovert and tirelessly physical. The great pleasure in this thrilling performance of the Fourth Symphony was the way in which Nelson’s febrile intuition and natural romanticism surged through the music. They animated the baroque grandeur of the finale in an overwhelming combination of vividness and sustained sense of growth and direction. The theme that opens the Symphony sounded like air from another planet, and Nelsons’s shaping of the first movement to its central mystery was a masterclass in refined musicianship. The Philharmonia Orchestra's playing honoured the monumental aspects of the music with an acute awareness of Brahms’s detailing.
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