INGRID FLITER, ALPESH CHAUHAN AND THE VSO OFFER ENTERPRISING CHOPIN AND ELGAR BUT WITH MIXED RESULTS
Ingrid Fliter (piano), Vancouver Symphony Orchestra/ Alpesh Chauhan (conductor): Music of Chopin, Elgar and Almashi, Orpheum, March 28, 2025.
What could be more enjoyable than a concert combining Ingrid Fliter’s Chopin with an Elgar symphony from Britain’s up-and-coming conductor Alpesh Chauhan? Probably very little, except that these performances did not quite live up to expectations. Fliter has demonstrated her strong Chopin credentials for two decades now, and her natural virtuosity and intensity of communication have proved fully rewarding. Nonetheless, her current incarnation of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No.2 was somewhat hard-edged and over-thought, lacking true poetic fragrance. Chauhan’s Elgar Symphony No.1 seemed to mainly feel its way through the opening movement, playing up orchestral swagger and brilliance, but settled more successfully into Elgar’s world in the Adagio and Finale.
Ingrid Fliter is a commanding Chopin pianist, and as shown in her 2014 recording for Linn, she aims at a reading of the 2nd concerto that is large scale, virtuosic and sophisticated. Alpesh Chauhan and the orchestra cooperated admirably in this performance, offering a strong opening ritornello and evident care for detail. At Fliter’s entry, one could immediately observe the pianist’s effort to differentiate closely-related phrases, giving one phrase strong point at its end, the next one, the opposite, always paying attention to intricate inner voices and volume levels. Soon, there were sparkling runs and innumerable little twists of within-phrase rubato that coexisted with passages of stunning virtuosity and dramatic weight. Proceeding section by section in the opening Maestoso, this was quite a spectacle! The problems were, first, that the integrating flow of the movement was only intermittently present and, second, the pianist did not often settle into the poetic repose necessary to mine the work’s beauty and joy. Everything seemed too serious and intense, too arduous and calculated, trying too hard to give emphasis. In listening to this traversal, I started the movement by thinking ‘That’s interesting’ after a particular phrase passed by, and ended it by thinking ‘Why did she have to do that?’
The radiant expanse of the opening of the Larghetto was nicely achieved by the orchestra, but I found Fliter’s entry too intense to maintain the spell, too conscious of making the music do something. Nonetheless, her best playing came towards the large climax at the end of the movement. The finale returned to the style of the opening movement, with consistent rubato and point-making again tending to undermine flow. I found it all rather jumpy and surfacy. The audience may have responded to the virtuoso flourish of the playing; they could not be responding to its tenderness, poetry and charm. All of this is, of course, a bit of a surprise since Fliter’s earlier performances have typically been marked by genuineness, spontaneity and a natural integration. Perhaps she is overthinking the work at this stage, or perhaps she just hadn’t played the concerto often enough recently for all her ideas to seamlessly cohere.
British conductor Alpesh Chauhan, now 34, is currently Music Director of Birmingham Opera Company and Principal Guest Conductor of Düsseldorf Symphony, and has conducted a variety of major orchestras to strong acclaim. He has also received very favourable reviews for his current Tchaikovsky series for Chandos. Though the current state of the UK may seem miles away in spirit from the majesty of Victorian England, it was as nice to see a British conductor conducting Elgar as it was to hear the VSO, an orchestra with British roots, playing it. The last Elgar symphony performance here was by Bramwell Tovey over a decade ago: his Second Symphony.
Elgar’s First Symphony (1908) is in some ways simpler than the Second, but poses the basic problem of how to wed the reverence and feeling of its many ‘nobilmente’ sections with an otherwise contrapuntal complexity and passionate exuberance. The classic Boult-Barbirolli-Handley tradition offered a template for wedding the work’s spiritual reach with its dramatic force at moderate tempos, and many other British conductors (and even some Americans, such as André Previn and Leonard Slatkin) have roughly followed this approach. The biggest challenger was (Sir) Georg Solti in the 1970s, daringly faster and more cut-and-thrust, allegedly following the speeds in the composer’s own 1931 recording. While many have now accepted that the composer’s speeds were only necessitated by the recording limitations of the period, Chauhan’s reading definitely seemed more in the Solti tradition.
Perhaps the young conductor was just getting used to the orchestra, but I found the opening movement unsettled and somewhat brash. The introductory ‘nobilmente’ theme was not soft enough and it did not allow its slow regal tread to proceed with enough reverence. The Allegro simply shot forward, with plenty of cut-and-thrust and with pugnacious brass often dominating the strings. Hints of a ‘pomp and circumstance’ stride as well as the ebullient drive of the composer’s ‘Cockaigne’ Overture also appeared as the work moved on. Exciting perhaps, but this symphony is not a showpiece, nor is it garish or overbearing. In fact, one big test of success at these quick tempos is how well the conductor can retreat to its somber ‘nobilmente’ feeling after the displays of exuberance and still maintain a seamless line. I found such transitions poorly done, not opening out sufficient space to avoid vagueness, and not being soft enough to convey the mystery therein. In the opening movement, we essentially got the passion and drive but not the reverence or mystery.
The following Allegro (‘Scherzo’) was better executed, bring out its truculence but also missing some of its contrast and tinges of mystery. Fortunately, things changed for the better in the lovely Adagio, where the Chauhan found softer volumes and exhibited the patience and sensitivity to just sit with the serene and ever-flowing beauty in the writing. Here was the intimate speaking quality of the composer’s lyrical lines and his wonderful architectural shaping: this was the Elgar I have known and loved! The conductor built the finale with comparable concentration and more measured speeds, generating strong cumulative power all the way from its quiet, expectant opening to its crowning restatement of the work’s opening theme at its close. Though some residual bullishness appeared, dynamics were better judged, the conductor’s love of the music shone through, and the orchestra’s playing (for example, in the woodwinds) was more sensitive too.
Which leaves the concert’s short opening work to ponder, and it comes from a totally different world: a touching lament by Ukrainian composer Zoltan Almashi entitled Maria’s City, written at the time of the siege and devastation of Mariupol in 2022. Many ensembles in Kyiv have performed this ‘Adagio for Strings’ with full awareness of the real pain endured, and the hope offered in its forlorn beauty.
It is a lovely piece of simple contrapuntal design, with romantic sentiment placed over Baroque roots. Benjamin Britten’s arrangement of Purcell’s Chacony might be a useful reference for its scale and style. The music always searches and transforms at a deliberate pace, led by the ‘voice’ of the soloists which appear at the opening and close of the work, and elsewhere. The full string orchestra consolidates and extends the feelings expressed by the soloists. The work lasts about 10 minutes and starts with a probing soliloquy from the viola, which suspend feelings in a rustic past. It then expands with great contemplation and beauty to a very frenzied and desperate middle section. The tension subsides, and the work ends with a soft, tender solo violin soliloquy, falling away to nothing.
Unfortunately, I think Alpesh Chauhan’s performance misread this work to some degree. His chosen tempo was too fast, and the contrapuntal development was too tight and intense. At times, the sheer bite of the counterpoint took me towards Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro, which however appropriate in the current concert, conveys much more projective feelings. The piece is less about hands-on anxiety and torment and more about the subtle pain that burns and gnaws within. Finally, I thought this approach left the soloists’ parts somewhat separated from the work’s core: add-ons rather than integral voices.
In any case, plenty of food for thought within a very interesting array of works.
© Geoffrey Newman 2025