{TABLE} Vocalise ............... Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No 3 .... Rachmaninov Symphony No 2 .......... Rachmaninov {/TABLE} FOR the second of the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra's Belfast concerts, on Saturday evening, the focus shifted from Tchaikovsky to Rachmaninov. Conductor Yuri Temirkanov's handling of the opening, strings only arrangement of the Vocalise - svelte, understated, even detached - set the tone for an evening which brought at least as great a sense of musical frustration as it did reward.
The soloist, Mikhail Rudy, sounded a lot less at one with Rachmaninov's Third Piano Concerto than he had a night earlier in Tchaikovsky's First. The steely delivery of the piano's gentle opening theme gave an accurate foretaste of a reading in which the soloist was all too clinical, all too edgy and generally uningratiating on tone.
With a seat closer to the orchestra than I had for the Tchaikovsky programme (front row as opposed to back row of Block F) I heard an orchestral sound of greater presence. It was better controlled at the bass end (less boom from double basses and timpani though still deficient in cello tone), and there was a slightly better sense of internal resolution at higher dynamic levels. Whatever the cause, however, the violins of this great orchestra still seemed weak in impact.
The performance of Rachmaninov's Second Symphony was surprisingly slack - short both on musical tension and emotional charge, not always tidy in detailing and not helped by the conductor's dallying with switchback rubato (for instance, at the start of the first movement's main Allegro moderato), or occasional ventures in what you might call upside down voice leading.
As at the opening concert, there was a major transformation for the encore, which was unrivalled by anything earlier in the evening for sharpness of focus and musical immediacy. Here, at last, were the characteristics of great orchestral playing. I didn't recognise the short atmospheric interlude, but was told by someone who had spoken to a player from the orchestra that it came from Rimsky Korsakov's Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh.
