Philharmonia Orchestra, St David's Hall (From South Wales Argus)

Philharmonia Orchestra, St David's Hall

4:29pm Monday 15th March 2010

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Replacement conductors stepping in at short notice frequently reserve the right to change an advertised concert programme.

The Italian Fabio Luisi did just that when taking the place of the Philharmonia's honorary maestro Christoph von Dohnanyi in what was meant to be a link with a previous visit.

On that occasion pianist Yefim Bronfman played the Brahms Second Concerto, the more popular of the two he wrote if not the more formidably mammoth, and turned up this time to deliver the first.

Luisi swopped Beethoven's Prometheus overture for the overture to Oberon by Weber in what appeared to be one of those perverse, last-minute changes that are the incoming conductor's prerogative.

But it made more sense, even when the orchestral forces were present to have performed the Beethoven. Weber, the early Romantic, made way for Brahms and Schumann, Romantics grappling with the problem of accommodating their passion in musical forms well on their way to being set in stone.

If ever a piano concerto called out for a larger-than-life soloist it is the Brahms D minor, and here it was a case of cometh the music, cometh the man, for Bronfman is big in both physical stature and breadth of vision.

Everywhere he matched the work’s mood, from the fire and fury of the overlong first movement to the repose and tenderness of the second and the ebullience of the third.

Luisi couldn’t have wished for better playing, and it was maintained in Schumann’s Second Symphony, a work whose form is barely able to contain its febrile emotions.

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