Ayako Uehara and the LSO
The Barbican

It wasn’t quite the usual personnel list at the LSO on Wednesday night at The Barbican, but the orchestra sounded as coherent as ever under the watchful eye of Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos.
The Japanese pianist Ayako Uehara collaborated as soloist with him to lead the orchestra through a majestic and grandiose interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto.
Although the first movement felt almost a little on the slow side, it was constantly full of fire and energy.
The orchestra accompanied sympathetically throughout, particularly with the muted string passages.
Uehara was obviously feeling the heat, wiping her hands on her stunning black and white dress, but her performance was perfectly poised and she was in no danger of slipping off the notes.
Her cadenza at the end of the first movement was magical with an exquisitely light touch in the upper octaves.
The second movement was a beautiful combination of lyricism as the theme was passed around soloists in the orchestra, and dancing rhythms, before giving way to the real vigour of syncopated rhythms in the last movement.
The sound seemed to just grow and grow and every player gave everything to support Uehara in creating a moving performance.
The brass proved they were on spectacular form in the second half of the concert. The strings and woodwind shimmered appropriately in Respighi’s The Fountains of Rome but the trombones, trumpets and tuba were at their most dazzling in The Trevi Fountain at Midday leaving a lasting impression for the rest of the orchestra to retreat from in the remainder of the piece.
Stravinsky’s The Firebird took a little warming up – the music is fragmented in the introduction and the solos didn’t quite intertwine and grow organically.
But by the Infernal Dance, the LSO had found its inner rhythm once again and the different sections contributed to an emotional build up of intensity through to the finale.