Remember the pianist who performed in a downpour at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics, fingers tumbling faster than the raindrops bouncing off his grand piano? That was Alexandre Kantorow. A Tchaikovsky Competition winner at just 22, and now a major international soloist with an arm full of recordings (and almost as many awards), Kantorow has been hailed as “Liszt reincarnated”. No wonder the Royal Albert Hall was packed for his latest Proms visit.
Joining forces with Maxim Emelyanychev and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Kantorow brought not one of the big Romantic warhorse concertos but a French novelty: Saint-Saens’s Concerto No. 5 “The Egyptian”. Taking its nickname from a slow movement that journeys “to the East” in music based on a Nubian love-song, the concerto is a diaphanous, perfumed affair – a soft-focus snapshot in sound.
But there was nothing touristy or obvious about Kantorow’s account, the opening Allegro moving like a silk dress on a dancer, orchestra moulded to every ripple of the piano’s lines, before the music melted in a heat-haze of a slow movement, delicate breezes circling in woodwind solos. Languor was banished in a dazzling Parisian knees-up of a finale – insouciant in the ease of its virtuosity.
An inspired bit of musical time-travelling prefaced the Saint-Saens with Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes, exotic 18th-century musical postcards from Turkey, Peru, Persia and North America. If anyone was expecting a big opener they would have been disappointed in this delicate, intimate chamber music. Emelyanychev forced us to lean in, to eavesdrop on this conspiratorial music-making, before whipping out a drum from under his music-stand and inviting the audience in with a barnstorming “Danse du grand calumet du soleil” – a playful bit of showmanship that echoed through the Beethoven later on.
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All but running onto the stage, Emelyanychev flung the orchestra into the famous opening chords of Beethoven’s Fifth – fate arriving breathless, knocking with unusual urgency. What followed was nervy, agile, sinewy: music shrugging off the weight of history and announcing itself fresh and vital. The SCO play like a period band, wood snapping on strings, all front-attack and supple sound. It’s not an obvious choice for the Royal Albert Hall, but clarity of intent carried it, sobriety softening just enough in woodwind solos (notably Martin Danke’s oboe) and in the grotesque game of a scherzo – a madman’s fantasy – before light returned in a burst of C major sunlight and sanity.
Add in Scottish composer Jay Capperauld’s Bruckner’s Skull – a contemporary meditation not just on death but the musical ghosts of the past – and we had a concert of huge stylistic breadth at pains to prove just the opposite. Nearly three centuries separate Rameau from Capperauld but Emelyanychev and this dynamo of an orchestra pulled them close, tightening their connecting threads, revealing kinship and connection.
The Proms continue at the Royal Albert Hall and other venues until 13 September. Calendar: www.bbc.co.uk/events/rb5v4f/by/date/2025
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