David Fray certainly has the locks to be a piano virtuoso (eat your heart out, Franzi). And he has the looks, the troubled brow, the pallor and a suitably eccentric manner (the Glenn Gould hunch and hum came out for all the runs). But does he have the hands?
He definitely has hands. And on last night's viewing they were the right hands for Mozart. The understated Piano Concerto in C major K503 has never been the most popular of Mozart's concertos. Eschewing virtuosity and outward emotion for sunny but sensitive inward mooching, the work requires an especially careful and purposeful touch, one that knows where it's going and what it's saying without forcing itself too much on the final outcome. It must dream, never do.
Fray did exactly this. We were being drawn in by not being drawn in. Ego was absent. His Gouldian hunch was no affectation, merely an attempt to hide in that cosy kink that the piano keyboard offers a pianist's head. It also seemed to help him gain greater ability to manipulate phrase and figure. These delicate, finely sculpted utterances came to us with Uchida's softness and Pires's naturalism. As he navigated the intermittently rainy final movement, I also kept being reminded of the quiet power of Lipatti. A very memorable Proms debut.
Detail was also attended to in Jaap van Zweden's bracing account of Bruckner's Eighth after the interval. No phrase was without a new lick of paint. The new subtleties of colour and texture highlighted the depth of talent in this superb Dutch orchestra. The warm vibrato of the principal Wagner horn was ravishing. The flutes were a sparky delight, relishing every single one of the many wind embellishments that were made in Bruckner's controversial 1890 revision.
Admittedly fluency is not as difficult to pull off in this edition, such is the successful integration and rationalisation of the more disparate elements of the classic Brucknerian pot pourri of a final movement. But even so, Van Zweden made the symphony sing and speak and, most impressively, dance, first vigorously, then airily, in the usually slightly overweight second movement Scherzo and Trio.
Even for a diehard arts disestablishmentarian like me, the thought that an orchestra of this quality could be in for the chop (it survived only by the skin of its teeth earlier this year) makes me somewhat gulp.
