Pianist Alexandre Kantorow has such a beautiful attack ★★★★☆

In the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam on Saturday evening when the concert starts, the rehearsal curtain is still half down. The curtain is intended to reduce the reverberation. mistake? Perhaps it contributes to the transparency of the orchestra’s sound, because that is what it is in Tchaikovsky’s op Romeo and Juliet based fantasy overture.

That orchestra is the National Orchestra of Belgium, which today goes through life as the Belgian National Orchestra – the language battle has been lost by both French and Dutch speakers. Conductor is Dutchman Antony Hermus, who at the last minute took over for the orchestra of which he will be chief from next season. For the Second Piano Concerto from Liszt he only had an hour to work with the soloist, the 25-year-old Frenchman Alexandre Kantorow.

Fortunately, Kantorow knows that crazy piece pretty well: in 2016 he made a phenomenal shot with Tapiola Sinfonietta (and his father as conductor). Kantorow doesn’t get that much orchestral energy back from the Belgians, but Liszt also offers more than enough spectacle at 95 percent. And gosh, what a stunning attack Kantorow has. When the cellist starts his slightly too vibrato-rich solo, you think: don’t play through it, the accompanying piano chords are perfect.

In Mendelssohns Italian Symphony the orchestra scores higher on finishing and daring. The second part is really really good. Hermus lets the orchestra play tight, but not small. Nice flutes. The final part is wild like a drive through Naples in which all the cars seem to collide, but in the end no one has a single scratch. That’s how we do it.