Returning to the Tippett piano concerto

Last Friday I played my first performance of the Tippett piano concerto in many years; it took place at the Barbican with the BBCSO and Alexander Vedernikov. I don't generally comment here on individual concerts but I feel this piece is so greatly neglected that it deserves mention. Ever since I was at university and studied Tippett's music with the marvellous musicologist Ian Kemp, I've felt like something of an evangelist for his music. The quality of feeling that Tippett creates in his best pieces is utterly his own, somehow combining otherworldliness with a Beethovenian earthiness. There are often things one has to forgive in his music; awful librettos in the operas, overreaching ambition (though not a bad fault, this), unidiomatic instrumental writing, passages where he seems to lose the direct emotional connection with what he's writing. And yet, in the midst of this is some of the greatest, most purely felt music of the later 20th century. For me the piano concerto is one of his best works, and I remain perplexed that it is so seldom programmed. The explanation is probably partly economics - it's not possible to prepare this concerto with an orchestra in only one rehearsal because it's very complex. But it's a remarkable work, full of deep feeling, contemplation, struggle, joy and much else besides. The BBCSO and Vedernikov took the piece very seriously, and I was delighted with the result. Vedernikov is something special, I think, a conductor who has been a little under the radar but hopefully is starting to emerge more into the limelight. Certainly his performance of Shostakovich 8 in the same concert was rather astonishing for the coherence he managed to create out of this sprawling hour-long work. He doesn't resort to superficial tricks, but rather trusts the music to unfold in its own time. His ability to adapt to Tippett's very particular idiom was very impressive. And, perhaps the greatest compliment of all, every one of the orchestral musicians I talked to sang his praises.