It's one of the most revolutionary beginnings in musical history: the opening bars of Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto, in which the piano, not the orchestra, has the first word with a mesmerising sequence of quiescent chords. The piece is so famous that its shock has been dulled, but Alexei Lubimov's performance with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and conductor Vladimir Jurowski managed to recapture the music's sense of novelty. Instead of a chord, Lubimov played a sonorous arpeggio, as if re-fashioning this over-familiar music. It was the first of many insights in a performance that revealed hidden dimensions to the concerto, especially in the subtle relationship he created with the OAE players.
Just as startling as Lubimov's interpretation was the sound of his fortepiano. To ears used to hearing the piece played on a big, brash Steinway, the effect was initially disconcerting. The fortepiano's delicate colours made the piece seem more intimate and less showy, and the piano part became a means of blending with the sonorities of the OAE's period instruments instead of a vehicle for self-conscious virtuosity. In the central section of the first movement, Lubimov painted a dramatic colour with the instrument's soft pedal, as the muted strings cast a tangible shadow over the music. He became part of the orchestra, accompanying the wind players, before reclaiming the limelight in a heroic return to the main theme of the movement.
For all this democratic exchange of roles, there were moments of violent contrast between soloist and orchestra, nowhere more so than in the slow movement. Lubimov responded to the orchestra's stark, rhetorical outburst with a rapt, prayer-like phrase.
The finale was full of boisterous energy, in which Lubimov's interpretative freedom was matched by the edge-of-the-seat excitement created by Jurowski and the players. Jurowski's performance of Mozart's 39th Symphony was no less highly charged, with the luxurious lyricism of the first movement and clattering syncopations in the finale.
