Staatskapelle Dresden/ Thielemann review - Trifonov sparkles in Mozart

Royal Albert Hall, London
Daniil Trifonov’s Mozart sparkled with virtuosity while Thielemann’s sensationally well-played Bruckner required more suppleness

Comparisons are inescapable. After two Proms this week of Mozart piano concertos and Bruckner symphonies from Daniel Barenboim and his Berlin orchestra, here was Christian Thielemann and his revered Dresden orchestra also with a Mozart piano concerto and a Bruckner symphony.

The result – with apologies to the sensitive – was a score draw. Dresden was better in the Mozart, Berlin ultimately won out in the Bruckner. Dresden’s great advantage in the former was Daniil Trifonov’s sparkling and virtuosic account of Mozart’s C major concerto, K467. The sheer elan of Trifonov’s pianism, abetted by a full-size orchestra and attentive accompaniment from Thielemann, meant the concerto reached out into the huge spaces of the Albert Hall in ways that more fastidious accounts struggle to match. Trifonov’s unapologetic approach was embodied in his own first and third movement cadenzas, which had Profokiev-like zip, but he spun the Andante with a limpid touch, too. Appropriately, his encore was a Prokofiev transcription.

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