Benjamin Grosvenor plays Chopin, CBSO, Symphony Hall, Birmingham, 1 June 2023, 5**** David Gray & Paul Gray

Schubert – Overture in the Italian Style in C major * Chopin – Piano Concerto No. 2 * Mozart – Symphony No. 41 (Jupiter)

The CBSO, under the baton of Riccardo Minasi, gave a nicely balanced and chronologically concentrated programme of music straddling turn of the 19^th Century.  So, we had Mozart pushing the possibilities of the Classical symphony as far as they could be pushed; Schubert paying homage to Rossini, a composer forever glancing in the rear-view mirror towards his Classical predecessors; and Chopin, writing in the early decades of the 19^th Century, but already deep in the shadowy forests of Romanticism.

Schubert’s Overture in the Italian Style in C major bubbles with the good humour and joie de vivre of the composer who inspired it.  Almost a pastiche rather than simply an homage, the work is characterised by the scurrying passage work and swirling accelerandi and crescendi so typical of Rossini’s buffa output.  The orchestra gave a well-controlled, ebullient performance that perfectly captured the mood.

Chopin composed brilliantly for the piano.  His orchestral writing is generally less assured and, at times, can be a bit monochrome.  Nevertheless, the strings of the CBSO created a darkly brooding mood and a feeling of suppressed agitation which set the scene well.  Pianist, Benjamin Grosvenor played with exquisite clarity of tone and technical fluidity. This enabled him to highlight the organic relationship between melodic line and ornamentation in Chopin’s keyboard writing.  Runs and flourishes are more than embellishment: they move the line forward and energise it.  Grosvenor brought this quality to the forefront in a spellbinding and remarkably sensitive reading of the central Larghetto movement.

Minasi opened the first movement of Mozart’s Symphony No 41 with exaggerated shaping, and this really accentuated dynamic contrasts and highlighted the different areas of thematic material.  It bordered on being a bit too mannered.  However, as the movement developed the thinking behind the interpretation became clear: it facilitated a very well-articulated presentation of the musical argument which in turn brought out the composition’s structural strength. A truly delightful concert which conjured up as much sunshine inside the Hall, as it did outside, on what felt like the first glorious day of a British Summer.

Riccardo Minasi – Conductor

Benjamin Grosvenor – Piano

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra