Review: Royal Philharmonic Orchestra ****

According to Mozart, everyone in Prague was whistling The Marriage of Figaro after its first performance. It would be difficult to whistle the overture with the accuracy and subtlety in the Royal Philharmonic’s performance under Dmitry Yablonsky.

The RPO’s reduced size for this, was further reduced for Haydn’s delightful first cello concerto with Natalie Clein as soloist.

Over the last 20 years or so, the timbre of original instruments has almost become the new norm in early classical music. This concerto is an early work of Haydn’s and the last movement even has passages that sound like Vivaldi, so that even with the reduced numbers, the orchestra sounded bland.

Not so Clein’s cello playing; this concerto may not be a great vehicle for display, but she made the last allegro molto movement sound effortless. The hall’s enthusiasm was rewarded with the G major prelude from Bach’s first solo cello suite. Rachmaninov may have written the same piano concerto four times, but fortunately his symphonies have a much greater breadth of style, and here, in the second of them, Yablonsky excelled. Drama, pathos, excitement and balance – he extracted it all. The second and final movements were particularly gripping, leading some members of the audience to forget their South Yorkshire reserve and cheer.