The centrepiece of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra’s Prom with their chief conductor Lahav Shani was a performance of Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto quite unlike any other. Shani, like his mentor Daniel Barenboim, is a wonderful pianist as well as a conductor, and in this instance played the concerto himself, directing his orchestra from the keyboard. It’s a familiar enough practice of course, in Mozart and Beethoven, though some might consider it foolhardy applied to Prokofiev, whose piano writing is nothing if not exactingly athletic, and who also demands orchestral playing and conducting of almost clockwork precision.
It proved, however, to be a tour de force that bordered on staggering. The devil-may-care brilliance and impertinent charm of Shani’s pianism suit Prokofiev down to the ground for starters, and you couldn’t help but be struck by the disarming dexterity of his way with those driven, helter-skelter allegros, or the airy grace with which he launched the slow movement’s almost balletic variations. Sweeping arm gestures in passages when the piano is silent controlled tempo and expression, but most of the time we were acutely aware of the orchestra’s intense focus on watching and listening to each other as well as to him. The whole thing was real edge-of-your-seat stuff as ensemble and balance risked coming apart at any moment. But they never did, and the end result was thrilling beyond belief.
