St Mary in the Castle, Friday 11 October 2019

To open the new season Hastings Philharmonic came together with Hastings International Piano Concerto Competition, the central work for the concert being Mozart’s Piano Concerto No23 in A with this year’s First Prize Winner, Fumiya Koido as soloist. It proved to be a winning combination, greatly helped by the full raised platform allowing the sound, in what is already a fine acoustic, to blossom and fill the space with ease and power.

The approach to the concerto by both pianist and conductor seemed clean and crisp at the outset, almost cool at times, with great clarity of articulation and individual orchestral voices. Real emotion evolved with the central Adagio with its gently flowing lines and suppressed intensity. The final Allegro assai sparkled into life and remained cheerfully optimistic throughout. An encore would have been nice but did not materialise.

The evening had opened with Mozart’s Haffner symphony, No35 in D. It had fine bravura in the opening movement and delicate figuration in the second. The militaristic approach to the Menuetto – I wouldn’t like to try to dance to this! – led into a fiery, fast-paced conclusion. Within St Mary’s the change in instrumentation which Mozart choses between the symphony and the concert was marked and particularly effective in underlining the change of tone and mood.

The second half brought us Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony – a work still surprisingly under-performed compared with the rest of the canon. The reserved, cautious opening gave way to an abrasive onslaught which never seems to be able to decide whether it wants to seduce us or batter us into submission. The intimacy of the opening of the slow movement brings some respite, with lovely running cello lines and wind figuration, but the returning power of the Scherzo soon puts this out of mind. Marcio da Silva takes the Finale at a hell-for-leather pace, which the orchestra are more than capable of meeting. The Mozartian figuration of the string writing is bombarded by the brass as if demanding an exultant climax, to which the strings eventually submit.

A splendid start to the season with so much more to come.