Yuri Bashmet is 50 this year. The bad boy of the viola (and how scary is that?) was, until recently, arguably its most persuasive exponent. Now there are younger soloists rising up to take over, but if Bashmet is bothered, he's not showing it.
Besides, he has the Moscow Soloists, his own chamber ensemble of high-calibre young string players with whom he appears as both soloist and director. The lower strings in particular are superb - any of the viola section could probably give Bashmet a run for his money.
Yet he can still be surprisingly withdrawn as a soloist. He must have played some of the pieces on this programme hundreds of times, but he hid himself behind a music stand and rarely engaged with the audience.
So when any consistent urge towards communication is absent, what's left? In Bashmet's case, enough - an often startlingly beautiful sound and the ability to make a piece sound as though it has been written for him. That was the case in the highlight of this programme, Britten's Lachrymae. Coming after a flimsy concerto arranged from one of Paganini's string quartets, it would have sounded like a masterpiece in any case, but in Bashmet's hands it was haunting, darkly and inventively coloured.
Bashmet's conducting isn't especially inspired in itself, but he acted as the focal point for the players in Schubert's finest quartet, Death and the Maiden, performed in an orchestra arrangement by Mahler. The scherzo, with its punchy, almost rustic swing, came across best, but the opening of the second movement was also effective, a mist of sound gradually coming into focus. The players had the strong rhythmic drive needed for the finale, but a similarly relentless pushing from Bashmet didn't suit the first movement. The leader was fazed by a broken string, and the violin solos didn't come off well.
Still, the Soloists had impressed in Britten's Two Portraits at the beginning of the concert, and were responsive accompanists in Weber's virtuoso Andante e Rondo Ungarese. The three encores were excellent - yet Bashmet the showman still wasn't coming out to play.
