Date: May 20 2013
Yuri Bashmet, Moscow Soloists
Sydney Opera House, May 18
For listeners accustomed to the lean, sinewy tone of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Yuri Bashmet, distinguished violist and conductor, and the Moscow Soloists offered a chance to hear a different style of string orchestra. With equal numbers of first violins, second violins and violas, the sonority is warm and rich. There are radiant colours in the upper violin range, generous fullness from the violas in middle voices and a light but strong bass.
Although they call themselves an orchestra of soloists, there is strong unanimity, cohesion and consistency of tone and approach. When one player uses vibrato, they all do, and with common velocity and intensity. The tapering of phrases and variance of loudness is unanimous, and the approach to shaping the music is born not of an idea of the moment, but of careful thought and preparation in rehearsal.
In Grieg's Holberg Suite the line in the first movement was smooth and sustained, the balance beautifully rounded. The finale wasn't goaded along but was permitted to find its natural buoyancy. There were moments in the second movement and in Bashmet's own performance of Bruch's Kol Nidrei where the reserve bordered on indifference or at least the fatigue of a long tour. Yet the virtue of this orchestra lies not in dynamism and spontaneity of the moment, but in the wisdom of the musical conception and the polish with which this is achieved.
In Mozart's Divertimento No. 1 in D major, K 136, the phrases had classical mastery of shape. Bashmet played the viola solo part of Paganini's Concertino in A minor with deft ease and a tone of light transparent richness. The work allowed a hint of the Dostoyevskian darkness of his musical personality to emerge.
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