Simon Trpceski and Singapore Symphony Orchestra deliver charismatic performance

Simon Trpceski and Eliahu Inbal/Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich

Esplanade Concert Hall
March 28, 7.30pm

Pianist Simon Trpceski has been billed as “the best thing to come out of Macedonia since Alexander the Great”.

While Trpceski has never invaded Persia, he shares with his fellow Macedonian a certain uncomplicated boldness and a flair for the conquest of difficult obstacles, as evidenced by his fresh, athletic performance of Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto with a well-oiled Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) under the inspired nonagenarian conductor Eliahu Inbal.

This was a performance of dynamism, dexterity and Mediterranean directness, not the hypnotic concentration of a Sviatoslav Richter or the patrician eloquence of a Garrick Ohlsson (who played the work with the SSO in a very different interpretation two years ago).

Trpceski is a natural showman who revelled in tricky passages with the elan of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. The outer movements were taken at a thrilling pace, to great effect in more frenetic moments such as the piano’s keyboard-spanning entrance in the last movement.

However, the same movement’s coda felt less like an exhilarating summit push and more like a breathless scramble towards the finish line.

There were a few uneasy moments in the first movement, with Trpceski’s lithe, clean sound sometimes failing to project adequately over the orchestra. One also missed the neurotic heartsickness at the core of the work, particularly in the second movement, whose long-spun melodies often felt declamatory rather than confessional.

This was not helped by Inbal and the SSO’s tendency to insert pauses that felt just a shade too precious between each bar of the main theme.

Nonetheless, it was a brilliant, energetic performance that earned a well-deserved standing ovation.

Trpceski’s two encores were exceptional. The last movement of Prokofiev’s 7th sonata was delivered with jaw-dropping technique and all the deranged automatism of the assembly line in Chaplin’s Modern Times.

The second was a performance of Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise in which Trpceski accompanied guest concertmaster David Coucheron. It was prefaced by some engaging remarks about Trpceski’s love of Singapore and music’s peace-making powers amid world disorder, and was as unexpected as it was touching.

The programme’s second half provided more wintry Russian despair, albeit political rather than personal. Inbal, one of the grand old men of conducting, inspired the SSO to a fabulous performance of Shostakovich’s 11th symphony with a magnetism and command that would have shamed conductors decades younger.

The Shostakovich was written to commemorate the 1905 Bloody Sunday massacre in St Petersburg and is a curious, demanding work: over an hour long, played without a break between movements, juxtaposing passages of grey desolation with lurid episodes of revolutionary bombast.

Inbal and the SSO made it sound like a masterpiece. For all its massed power in passages such as the second movement’s demented triplet climax (preceded by brass snarls of terrifying unanimity), the SSO played with cohesion and finesse.

The third movement’s viola theme was shaped with marvellous subtlety and Inbal’s command of the orchestra was absolute, down to the fine gradations of the pianissimo pizzicato passages in the lower strings.

This was a compelling and charismatic performance of a difficult work, and proof that, in the right hands, the SSO can hold its own against any orchestra in the world. Rarely has musical misery sounded so rewarding.