To St James’s Piccadilly to hear the young pianist Misha Kaploukhii give an impressive performance of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, accompanied by the Greenwich Chamber Orchestra. Kaploukhii is a rising star, a postgraduate at the Royal College of Music where he recently won the Concerto Competition, and I enjoyed his reading of a favourite concerto of mine.
And although he isn’t yet the finished article – as I’m sure he himself would admit – he is certainly a pianist I will be keeping my eye on. The Fourth Concerto starts with a Beethovenian novelty, the piano alone playing a chordal introduction. Kaploukhii took a no-nonsense approach where others linger, and this characterised his playing throughout. His technique is robust and there was some glittering and thrilling passagework. Most at home in the heroic sections, Kaploukhii could perhaps have found more poetry in the rhapsodic music of the development section of the first movement, or the unique second movement, with its dialogue between dreamy soloist and stern orchestral unison. But there was no doubting the assurance of Kaploukhii’s playing in the cadenzas in the outer movements, and his command at the keyboard.
The Greenwich Chamber Orchestra, led by conductor David Cutts, supported Kaploukhii well for the most part, although occasionally the lower strings held him back a little. The orchestra was heard to good effect in an assertive Coriolan Overture, where the church’s resonant acoustic helped the opening chords resound (elsewhere it could tend to muddy the sound). The horns were terrific, especially in the first movement climax of the concerto.
The second half was a sparkling Fourth Symphony – all three of the pieces on the programme were premiered at the same event in 1807 – bursting with compositional invention, leader Gonzalo Acosta to the fore in the scurrying finale. But the evening belonged to Misha Kaploukhii.
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