Mstislav Rostropovich and Maxim Vengerov are both exuberant artists with tremendous energy, so they should have proved a winning combination. But this was one of those evenings when things don't quite cohere.
A change of programme might have had something to do with it. The first half of the concert was planned as a tribute to Benjamin Britten. Vengerov was initially down to play the latter's Violin Concerto, but because of an illness in his family and the resultant need to reschedule his commitments, he opted for the Stravinsky Concerto in its place. Stravinsky isn't quite Rostropovich's thing. As a conductor, he's at his best in 20th-century music which draws on and modifies the Romantic tradition - Britten, Shostakovich, Prokofiev. He seems less at ease with the neo-classical modernism of middle-period Stravinksy and despite telling moments, the whole was blunt round the edges at times, lacking the quintessential spikiness that the work needs.
It was Vengerov who ultimately held the performance together, at one point averting what could have been a genuine disaster. Partway through the second slow movement a string on his Strad broke. With an impish grin, he snatched the leader's violin and carried on regardless. Playing with a lustrous, sweet tone, he's faultless in this music - witty, poised and infinitely charming, avoiding the dour severity which some interpreters prefer. Predictably, he brought the house down.
All that remained of Britten, meanwhile, was the American Overture, something of a jeu d'esprit, dating back from 1941 and unperformed in his lifetime. Rostropovich's approach is on the serious side, very much pointing up the pre-echoes of Peter Grimes in the heaving string textures and the wonky, stuttering march which opens and closes the overture and flashes forward to the opera's staggering passacaglia. It was only after the interval, however, that Rostropovich came into his own with Prokofiev's Sixth Symphony, that great, uncompromising work which charts the composer's personal and political despair at the state of post-war Russia. Even here, things took a while to get going. Rostropovich's choice of a slow-ish tempo for the opening movement came dangerously close to making it episodic and it wasn't until we reached the Largo that the work's impact was fully felt. The finale, a gradual descent into a sonic maelstrom, was genuinely terrifying, as it should be.
