The highlight of the evening has definitely got to be Barry Douglas’ Rach 2. When Barry Douglas won the Tchaikovsky competition in 1986, he was the second person outside Russia after Van Cliburn (1958) to win it unanimously. I watched that competition on TV and remember many things.

Firstly, a statement he made when asked if he played to what the judges wanted to hear, of which his reply was that you do not play in a specific way just to please someone but you play in a way which you truly believe; and this cannot be orchestrated because how you play is how you perceive it to be.

This to me is honesty and integrity, which manifested in his playing of the Moussorgsky in the second round of the competition where he got a standing ovation even before the closing bars of the piece. Last night this integrity once again shone out.

I have heard the Rach 2 about a zillion times; it has been so overplayed that nowadays I find it so hard to do a review because very often I come out having listen to a great player with nothing new to say.

Last night the years of anticipation to hear Barry Douglas was well worth the wait. When Nikolai Dahl cured Rachmaninov of his depression through self-hypnosis, Rachmaninov had felt a renewed vigour, and proceeded to produce some of his most beautiful pieces of music. Barry Douglas was able to show this splendour in the concerto, something which I feel Rachmaninov so wanted to show to the world.

From the striking of the opening chords there was a certain sense of mysticism, his attention to detail was seen through his eye contact with the First Cellos and the orchestra, which in previous times I have not seen a soloist do. He possesses phenomenal strength which was able to cut through the tutti of the orchestra and appear clear on many occasions where I felt the orchestra should have been a little bit softer.

Barry Douglas does not use much of the sustained sostenuto pedal but prefers to sculpt the raw note as if it was a string instrument rather than a percussive one. His quieter moments were a charm, especially in the flute solo passage which was very hypnotically done. He brings you into his world when he is at the podium and this is the type of intensity that makes you feel special as if he was playing only to you. His ending of the first movement with the sustained forte note was something definitely different from other performances. I thought it was highly effective because it stamped its authority all the way to the end with just that sustained note.

He has been noted to drop notes but I think this stems from his willingness to throw caution to the wind which was quiet evident last night, minus the dropped notes. In the quieter second movement, he produced the internal depth of tone I have longed to hear from our grand piano at the VCH, thus proving that it can be done when put into the hands of the correct person.

Douglas' build-up at the end of the third movement was carefully executed, yet like an avalanche coming down a mountain, and still always in full control of the situation. The crowd appreciated with thunderous applause. For the encore he played Liszt Paraphrase on themes from Verdis' Rigoletto, a piece which allowed him to show off various virtuostic aspects from the catapulting silk runs across the keyboard to the bombastic 10-fingered chords descending at breakneck speed. Once again this stamped his status as a truly outstanding Tchaikovsky winner.

By Derek Lim

After the performance of Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto, the hall seemed conspicuously more spacious when the second bell rang. Brahms' Third Symphony, the programme notes say, is not his most popular, in fact it probably is his least popular. Whether you subscribe to this view depends, as always, on your person; it ranks a little higher in my book, though, than the Second, which I find rather repetitive. That being said, the Third does have its individual problems, mostly to do with its pacing in the first movement. Is it an impulsive, youthful music or should it be more stately, burnished and perhaps a little more mellow?

The first movement does have its many moments of lunging, Tchaikovsky-like scales (Yes, Brahms would not have approved of my comparison) which point to a more "exciting" approach, and churning passages in Brahms' own inimitable style, but like the last movement, and indeed all the movements, it ends quietly. There are other problems. Should the second movement be in the style of Brahms' great slow movements (By the way, I do think that the melody in the second movement is one of the less memorable ones) or more an Andante? Should the third movement be great and Romantic or rather more introspective? Should the fourth movement attempt to be more heroic, or should the conductor bear in mind that it, too ends in a rather calm, and even resigned, manner? Each listener, and conductor must decide for himself; what follows are as always, my own opinions.

Shui Lan and the SSO's performance of the Brahms shows a work-in-progress, if you will - an interpretation only beginning to form well - as was Tuesday's Beethoven. Broad interpretive decisions are present, but I do think that the orchestra seems a little reticent in this music, unwilling to make personal gestures. It may well be that time was short (this was a packed week indeed), and there was inadequate rehearsal time.

For the first movement then, Shui Lan chose the more youthful, lunging approach, with great accelerandi, a rather unsubtle approach, but subtlety (and details) will develop with more performances, I believe. His reading shows a more "episodic" approach, dramatic, but not revealing so much of the structure of the piece. The ultimate aim in conducting is to make everything seem inevitable, of course, and to bring out the logic of the piece.

The second movement was taken at a leisurely tempo, with much to savour along the way (the more mellow approach that I mentioned earlier). Brahms' melodies abound here, though to my mind they are not very memorable, and there was much to enjoy in terms of playing. I would have preferred more phrasing, and more daring in the solo passages. Time stops in this slow movement, but I never had the feeling it did in this performance.

The third movement, recently used, most irritatingly, in a Santana rearrangement (which only proves that some people really can't come up with their own tunes) and set to words mostly to do with saccharine feelings. The beauty of much of the music we love is that it can express so many emotions at the same time, and uncover emotions that we would otherwise not have known we had within ourselves. Rearrangement does limit the range, and I particularly disapprove of it, especially when the original composer is not identified! Especially when one can buy a very decent recording of Brahms' Third, plus another symphony (usually the Second) for half the price of the Santana album! How is it that someone can steal, in effect, someone else's work, rearrange it and then win prizes and earn lots of money from the crime?

But I digress. The movement, for me, does say a lot about love (if you know anything about Brahms the subject would have been a certain Clara), but even more about loneliness. Frei aber einsam (Free but lonely) was Brahms' (shared) motto; here his loneliness brought out a similar feeling of emptiness in the music, but it is a collective loneliness, as if Brahms was instead of "Komm ihr Tochter, hilf mir klagen" ("Come, my daughters, help me weep" of Bach's St. Matthew's Passion fame) was saying, "Komm, ihr Freunde, hilf mir klagen" ("Come, my friends, help me weep").

Shui Lan's performance of the third movement reflected this loneliness with lush, romantic gestures, and did a very good job overall in a sensitive interpretation. However, as always, "a musician is only as good as his transitions" (Artur Schnabel), and the transitions here needed a little more in the way of control and patience.

The turbulent landscape of the fourth movement is again difficult to navigate as Brahms' various moods assert themselves rather episodically. The logic of the piece wasn't very apparent in this rather fiery interpretation, and when it came to the final pages, I wished for a more resigned, motionless, time-stopping performance, as it were, it was ended rather crisply and shortly.

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