A lacklustre performance can normally be blamed safely on the conductor. But in this instance, there was no doubt whatsoever that it was the soloist in Mozart's Piano Concerto No 25 who was responsible for draining this magnificent work of all vitality and warmth. Ivan Moravec, now in his 70s, appears to all intents and purposes to be a model of classical restraint and good taste. An imposing, statuesque figure at the piano, Moravec allows his hands to glide horizontally across the keys without a glimmer of energy or effort.
And what you see is exactly what you hear: in this case, a performance so pedestrian as to be almost unbearable. Everything that gives Mozart's music its heart - joyously rippling broken chords, cheeky phrase endings, bubbling scales - was delivered with implacable flatness.
It may not have been only a matter of interpretation; there were times when Moravec gave the impression of barely getting through the notes. Conductor Lu Jia may have been aiming for a sympathetic echo of Moravec's expressionless style, but it was depressing to hear the deadpan mood affecting every part of the orchestra. Even the Hallé's normally sparky wind section sounded a little dreary.
The orchestra's recovery for Shostakovich's 1932 Hamlet suite could not have been more drastic. Written at the height of his powers, Shostakovich's score takes a perverse and caustic pleasure in cutting the romanticised figure of Hamlet down to size with some hilariously anachronistic characterisation. At Bridgewater Hall, Ophelia's tipsy song, delivered just before she accidentally wobbles to her doom in a nearby lake, was deliciously shaped on flute and clarinet by Julien Beaudiment and Lynsey Marsh in a performance that was as vibrant and colourful as the Mozart had been monochrome.
It was in Stravinsky's Firebird, however, that Jia and the Hallé really had the chance to shine. Following a taut, hard-driven Infernal Dance, and a hauntingly beautiful Berçeuse, the miraculous entry of the finale's theme - shaped and controlled by Jia to emerge like a ray of light from a shimmering, almost inaudible string tremolo - was stunning.
