Review: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra ***
THE orchestra sounded ponderous in the all-Mozart first half. Mozart's Symphony No. 33 was slow paced, had no nuanced phrasing, and its inner movements were soporific.
In Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24, the young German soloist Martin Helmchen showed his energy, precision and emotional range, but this work too was slow. It is Beethovenian in dramatic rhetoric, but here the orchestra went beyond Beethoven and produced an over-blown Byronic utterance almost too much for Mozart's harmonies to bear.
This prepared us for the romantic gigantism of Richard Strauss' Alpine Symphony. Strauss handled his forces with ease and so did conductor Andris Nelsons, who conjured up playing of sure-footed bravado from all sections of his orchestra.
Leeds Town Hall