Page 183 - Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Coverage Book 2023-24

remarkable, and I certainly couldn’t have been the only one who wondered how
he could have played parts of this concerto with such ease and accuracy – the
overhand parts, and the extensions are considerably more demanding than the
span of the hands (which in any case is more of a problem in the Second Piano
Concerto). He was fortunate, too, to have received superlative support from
Domingo Hindoyan and the RLPO who were sympathetic to everything Tsujii
needed. He was rarely, if ever, drowned out by the orchestra and Hindoyan
encouraged his orchestra to engage in dialogue with their pianist in a concerto
that shares similarities here to the great Brahms No.2.

I think a standing ovation was probably always going to be inevitable – and it
was. The encore, Nikolai Kapustin’s Eight Concert Etudes, Op.40 No.1, was as
virtuosic as you would have wanted it – jazz inflected, delivered with breakneck
speed and highly enjoyable. I suspect Nobuyuki’s Tsujii’s performance will be
long remembered.

The concert had opened with a rarity – one not played at the Proms since 1932
– Arthur Honegger’s Rugby. That nine-decade wait hardly seems surprising
because the work is a bit of a drag, even though it is less than ten-minutes long.
Works inspired by sports are quite thin on the ground – although Sibelius wrote
one inspired by skiing, and Ives, at the turn of the last century, of a Harvard and
Yale soccer match. I tried but couldn’t see much ‘rugby’ in the Honegger –
though fleeting glimpses of Paul Dukas kept appearing for some reason.
Honegger apparently found rugby more spontaneous than football – the first
closer to nature, the second science (something my chemistry master would
never have accepted as logical). Honegger’s music, far from implying the
anarchy of the former, seemed more often to achieve a rhythmic structuralism

of the latter with its pace and energy often repetitive enough to suggest the
volleying to-and-fro of rugby ball exchanges. But if the music hardly ever pauses
then this is the kind of rugby match you wouldn’t really want to be a part of; I
am not sure this was an uber violent match, but it was certainly one to leave you
thoroughly exhausted.

The performance was a fine one and gave us a first glimpse of what this
orchestra and conductor partnership were like. The brass, in particular, were
superb – brilliant, bright and bold and this is an orchestra with a rich tone, even
a rather romantic sound. There was certainly no lack of colour in the playing –
I just wish I had enjoyed Honegger’s rugby match slightly more than I did some
of those I played at school. This wasn’t the bruising and bloody encounter for
me Honegger’s inspiration for the work (1930’s French rugby – a merciless
battlefield) was quite supposed to be.