Konsertrecension: the Concert Chins piano concerto sets the imagination in motion

There is something special with the piano concertos. It must be it, because so few works in the genre are expressed and so rarely leaves an impression. I mean of course, the ”new” piano concertos; those that have been added after 1950. Much more common and more successful is the corresponding concertos for violin, cello, clarinet, trombone – yes, what instrument at any time.

Except for the piano.

Many composers admit beröringsskräck for the 88-toothed beast, notwithstanding that it is often precisely the instruments they can play. György Ligeti is one of the few that succeeded – and, in Sweden, Sven-David Sandström with the ”Five pieces for piano and orchestra” from 2016. This is what I come on at the meeting with the Concert Chins completely brilliant piano concerto from 1999.

and demanding landscaped composition, likely furiously difficult for the pianist. But not for the listener, as of the Chin are invited to a wonderfully rich and wondrous ljudvärld. The association with Alice in wonderland is inevitable. In particular, as Lewis Carroll's peculiar surrealism is central in the Concert Chins creation, ever since childhood in a poor south Korea, where she once learned to play the piano.

In four alternating batches led the talented swiss pianist Francesco Piemontesi us out of a clinking glasskärvespel in javanese gamelanmönster to a singular hiking in All the tracks where the mysterious mandolins and secret the harp, waiting around corners and then grow into something huge and spinning around in perpetuum mobile that will be one long F that develops itself with an irresistible energy...

Yes, the Concert Chin puts the imagination in motion. The evening valiantly inhoppade conductor, however, placed no greater elegance of Mendelssohn's ”Hebrides” and the Brahms second symphony. Rather a lunk with bad tempoövergångar not able to create either organically or dramatically flow.

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