Prom 27: 5.08.16 - Helen Grime, Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky

[bluestateprommer]

"awful", "an abomination", "unforgivable", "a mockery of one of the greatest works ever written for violin", "I thought that I must have tuned in to the first round of "The X Factor" by mistake!"
"Really? Please!" to quote HM The Queen. Whilst I have no problem with others expressing their opinions - it is a forum after all - Pekka Kuusisto's playing of the Tchaikovsky was none of those things.

Having just (finally) caught up with PK's performance of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto, I must confess that I was expecting a train wreck. It proved nothing of the sort, at least IMHO, so I'm with pureimagination in that respect. While there were certainly some quirky tempi, particularly in the first movement, it did not strike me quite as extreme as the more vociferous commentators (or indeed Tom Service, in his rather typically OTT attempt to "warn" us all in advance) indicated. I've heard the Tchaik VC performed much, much worse than PK's rendition, once by the concertmaster of an orchestra who simply wasn't up to the job, in what basically ended up being a train wreck. To be honest, had said concertmaster used some of PK's slower tempi (from now) in some unaccompanied passages (back then), the concertmaster's performance would have been less of a mess, at least in those parts. Plus, if nothing else, PK's encore showed that he knows how to entertain a crowd, and encourage the better kind of audience participation. So maybe a one-off, but far from the worst one-off I've ever heard.

[edashtav]

Having just (finally) caught up with PK's performance of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto, I must confess that I was expecting a train wreck. It proved nothing of the sort, at least IMHO, so I'm with pureimagination in that respect. . I've heard the Tchaik VC performed much, much worse than PK's rendition, [...].

I'm in full agreement with you. To some, this performance may have sounded idiosyncratic to the point of wilfulness. I don't think it was, they soloist had examined the evidence, gone back to first principles and ignored the lazy props of uncritical tradition. I found his approach discomforting but at the same time refreshing and illuminating. It could become the new "norm.".