A Matter of Balance

Brahms has certainly not been in short supply over the past few seasons, but it was nonetheless fitting that the Berlin Philharmonic’s season, which opened with a complete cycle of the symphonies, should end with two different concert programmes, each featuring one of the composer’s great concertos. Indeed, the first of these programmes, which also included Debussy’s Images pour orchestre and the first of Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsodies, may have contained the orchestra’s most satisfying Brahms performance this year, a refined account of the Violin Concerto propelled by Christian Tetzlaff’s assured reading of the solo part. It may seem odd to apply ‘conservative’ as an adjective of praise, but the evening’s performance of the Violin Concerto achieved its own particular greatness largely though moderation. The tempi seemed neither frantic…