Forget all those jokes you hear about the cello: you know, the ones about an oversized contraption of varnished wood and stretched cable having to be nailed to the floor and being played upside down. In the hands of someone with an extraordinary talent - and I don't use words like "extraordinary" or "talent" lightly, let alone together in the same breath - such as the Chinese-born prodigy Jian Wang, it makes a glorious noise that belies description in words. (And if it's a 1622 Amati like Mr Wang plays, all the more the better.)

I'll say this: if you've never had the opportunity to listen to this remarkable gentleman play, it's your loss. Many promise; Wang delivers. I first heard him way back in April 1994 when he first performed the Dvořák Cello Concerto with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, and subsequently on his latter visits, Shostakovich's First Cello Concerto and the Brahms Double. More recently in March 2000, he gave a double-bill of the Rococo Variations and Don Quixote, which totally eclipsed Beethoven's Eighth in a concert that was part of the Beethoven symphonic cycle.

Or to put this another way, Wang Jian holds the distinction of having been reviewed by no less than four Inkpotters, and passing every time with flying colours. Personally, I've always enjoyed listening to Wang Jian perform because of the incisiveness and gorgeous timbre of his playing. He has cut a number of albums on Deutsche Grammophon, and in fact, his début recording with the Yellow German Label was the Haydn Cello Concerti, with Tang Muhai conducting the Lisbon-based Gulbenkian Orchestra (DG 463 180-2). His albums, fabulous as they are, don't do him full justice because his live performances are always different.

Like in the D major Cello Concerto here: his approach was one of empathy and communion of Haydn's Weltanschaaung with the listening audience, and not a five-hundredth-time mere rehash of over-bedded lyricism and exposition. With an uncanny sense of concentration and expansive breadth of dynamics, he brought the music to life with an immediacy that disproved Haydn's sometime reputation as a prolifically unimaginative hack.

That said, the D major concerto, having languished in anonymity and miscreditation for the better part of two centuries, is not so much one of amazing feats of presdigitation and bowing fireworks, but one of pastoral repose and rumination that matches so agreeably with the rotund, autumnal timbre of the cello. Wang's shading of the cello's sonorities was, as expected, genteel and transparent; an intimate, civilized sound that beguiled the ear.

Under guest conductor Luke Dollman, the orchestral introduction was initially perhaps too leisurely and truth be told, the minimal chamber forces which Dollman employed distinctly did not look comfortable being so exposed. Wang pushed a bit at the tempo when the cello finally made its entrance, and he was so comfortable negotiating the turns of complex passagework that it seemed almost effortless to him. Using the cadenzas by Maurice Gendron, an early champion of this work, I thought Wang did overphrase Gendron's stylish writing which, for a moment, threatened to eclipse poor old Haydn.

The soloist-conductor partnership was also something short of empathic, even if Dollman managed a degree or two of sympathy for Wang's cause. Towards the end of the slow movement, we witnessed twenty-five musicians playing an amazing pianissimo as sonic canvas for the cello's quiet meditations. This set the stage for Gendron's simple, but not simplistic, forty-note cadenza that closed the Adagio: a satin-smooth elision that Wang unfolded to perfection, ending with such a rapturous exegesis that it set the hairs at the nape of one's neck a-tingling.

Finally breaking into a smile, Wang led off into the finale with generous amounts of portamento and bravura, yet without making too much of a good thing. No overplayed musical filigrees of crumpets and tea from Currier and Ives, then, but a sensible, pellucid reading of wistful intimacy. His exegesis into Haydn must have been a challenge for Dollman and orchestra to keep up with, but credit to them, they did not let him down. For the encore, Wang gave the Allemande from Bach's First Cello Suite at the third curtain call, and was spotted going off at the intermission, all in the day's work.

After the break, Adelaide-born wunderkind and eleventh-hour replacement Luke Dollman came into his own in Dvořák's Seventh Symphony, with the orchestra restored to its full Romantic-sized complement. Dollman, an alumnus of the Elder Conservatorium of Music (lately of the University of Adelaide), had the full, mellow measure of the Bohemian idiom, and delivered a reading that captured the essence of Dvořák's overall symphonic architecture.

Without excessive indulgence and conducting with clear, precise strokes of the baton, he created an immediate feeling of expectation from the word go, gradually crafting the various sections and thematic motifs together into an impressive climax, before rounding things off with a clever little coda. The slow movement was equally genial in character, and the duality of the third movement scherzo-and-interlude could not have been more contrasting in temperament: the small pause - a musical comma, as it were - between the end of the Poco meno mosso interlude and reprise of the Vivace scherzo was very smartly articulated. The conclusion, when it finally arrived, was grand without being pompous.

As the audience showered him with approval, Dollman was equally generous in sharing the credit all round. He had the entire orchestra stand up with him through each of his five curtain calls (although the musicians, I have to say, could have tried to smile a bit more). It certainly made up for the dismal opening to the evening, the Mozart G minor "Little" Symphony, No.25. Played by a chamber-sized group that was only slightly larger than the one used in Haydn, it was almost small enough for one to not expect a conductor leading.

Still, Dollman led the musicians, who, being an indubitably competent bunch, responded with their usual poise and flair. They crossed their T's and dotted their I's, but rhythmically it was too rigid, even tending towards some heavy-handedness in phrasing. In a way, it was too well-mannered to pass muster.

Those who know the work will remember the catchy theme of the opening movement. I only wish that Dollman had injected more momentum into the pulse of the movement, that he had played with a wider latitude of dynamics, that he had relaxed the reins a bit more and let some sense of spontaneity into the music-making. While there was some opulence in the slow movement, the dramatic contrasts were not fully brought out and the result was a far cry from the nationalistic romanticism of the Dvořák.

Okay, so it would be unfair to describe Dollman's account of the Mozart as "merely routine", but it really didn't inspire much enthusiasm, either - the audience didn't even accord the conductor a second curtain call. Rather than blame it on the Dollmeister's lack of musical insight (which is obviously not the case, not on the basis of his Dvořák), I think the music just needed a final touch of polish and buffing up.

Benjamin Chee knows (quite) a bit about the movies as well.

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19.2.2002 © Benjamin Chee

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