The Halle

St George's Hall

Bradford

Popular Halle guest conductor Cristian Mandeal chose to open this last concert of the 2013/14 Bradford season with music from his homeland. Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsody No 1 is one of its composer’s most enduring compositions.

Mandeal’s idiomatic accenting of the native song and dance rhythms set the seal on a performance bursting with energy. Brilliant work from every section of the Halle included the opening interplay between clarinet and oboe, and a rare opportunity for a solo viola to bask in the limelight.

Composed in 1921, 20 years later than Enesco’s rhapsody, Prokofiev’s 3rd Piano Concerto has always attracted pianists who know no fear of the most technically demanding summits of the repertoire.

Sofya Gulyak, First Prize winner of the 2009 Leeds International Piano Competition, is just such an artist. Gulyak’s volcanic command of the concerto’s outer movements generated a surge of power that was almost frightening in its intensity.

The slower, lyrical passages shimmered and sparkled as though Gulyak had sprinkled stardust over the keyboard. Prokofiev’s dense virtuosic writing for the orchestra was carefully balanced by the Halle conducted by Mandeal; he is always a sympathetic and responsive concerto partner.

Back to the first decade of the 20th Century for the final work with the sweeping romanticism of Rachmaninov’s one hour-long Second Symphony which Mandeal conducted without a score.

Sumptuous string and brass sonorities, the singing quality of the yearning Adagio with its glorious clarinet solo, and the rich orchestral colours in the symphony’s majestic ending showed the Halle to be on cracking form.

Geoffrey Mogridge