How extraordinary that Mstislav Rostropovich can still have something so fresh to say about the Dvorak cello concerto. Over the past 50 years he must have played the work many hundreds of times. Yet the cellist can still make an audience listen to it anew - as he did this time, with Kurt Masur and the London Philharmonic Orchestra his engaged and sensitive accompanists.
In his famous recordings, Rostropovich's account of the Dvorak sweeps all before it. Every phrase and flourish is gloriously larger than life: the colours bright, the heart worn grandly on the sleeve. But that is not so now. At the Festival Hall there was mortality in the playing, even valediction in the eloquent phrasing, and a greater fragility in harmonies that once shone with such certainty. The imperious technique is still there, of course, but it is no longer superhuman as it once was.
The musicianship was exemplary - there was a magical hush between soloist and violins as the concerto gathered itself for its last climax - but the cellist's art is more contemplative these days: more inward, less driven. Yet these aspects are all there in the score, waiting to be illuminated. If Dvorak, as someone once wrote, is the composer for all seasons, then this was Rostropovich as the lion in winter.
Masur opened the evening with a mellow account of the Brahms Variations on the St Anthony Chorale. The LPO's playing was so genial and unassertive - even slapdash at times - that one wondered whether conductor and orchestra might be having an off night. But a quicksilver account of the nimble Fifth Variation banished such fears.
For the second half of this thoroughly middle-European programme, Masur ventured steadily eastwards. Liszt's symphonic poem Les Préludes is not the composer's greatest contribution to posterity, but Masur made it sound more interesting than it is.
The real highlight, though, was a spine-tingling performance of Janacek's Taras Bulba, played with iron control and virtuosity by the entire orchestra. It made one wonder whether anyone has ever thought to ask Masur to conduct this composer in the opera house. If they haven't, they jolly well should.
