ASMF/Perahia review – music-making of the highest order

There were moments in this first instalment of Murray Perahia’s Beethoven concerto cycle with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields when the pianist’s hands slid seamlessly from the keyboard to the orchestra. (Think air-piano and you’ll get the picture.) The orchestra had little need of such gestures – that much was clear from their crisp, brisk curtain-raiser, Beethoven’s early Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus, Op 43, led energetically from the front desk by Tomo Keller. The players even grinned as they exchanged volleys of Viennese musical wit.

Perahia’s association with ASMF as the chamber orchestra’s principal guest conductor is longstanding, and the match remains an excellent one. With the piano almost surrounded by the orchestra, his whole upper body communicating with the musicians around him, Perahia was above all a chamber-music partner. In the Concerto No 1 in C major, Op 15, classical sensibility reigned: Perahia’s delicate touch paired beautifully with the orchestra’s own subtly aerated tone, and Beethoven’s musical jokes in the final movement emerged, charming and ever-neat, in playful dialogues across the stage.

The Concerto No 3 in C minor, Op 37 involves rather more Sturm und Drang and was performed here in gorgeous high definition. From the perfectly voiced chords of the slow movement to the crystalline, minutely articulated figuration elsewhere, Perahia’s generous array of tone colours always emerged in intimate conversation with the other musicians, his keyboard suspended within the orchestral texture after all. This was a true collaboration – and music-making of the highest order.