There are orchestras in central Europe stuffed with ego and totally devoid of personality (trust me, I've heard them).
Thankfully the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande rises above such self-regard. These players perform with a smiling elegance, attentive and trusting as they follow the understated beat of their music director Neeme Jarvi.
Jarvi’s secret must be in assiduous rehearsal, as in performance he sometimes seems to stop conducting altogether, unless with a shrug of the shoulder or the lift of an eyebrow. And Tuesday’s concert represented both a wonderful return to Birmingham of this once Principal Guest Conductor of the CBSO, and a joyous welcome to this Swiss orchestra he has taken on.
Nothing shattering about the programme, other than the topping-and-tailing of works by Jarvi’s Estonian compatriot Arvo Part: the intense, well-judged Silhouette (Hommage a Gustave Eiffel) which opened the evening, and the simplistic carillon Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten which concluded as an appropriate encore.
The main courses were wonderful. Boris Berezovsky’s solo playing in the Grieg Piano Concerto was so well-integrated as to be almost unnoticeable (and that is a huge compliment). His reading was questing, searching, almost improvisatory, and Jarvi’s orchestra responded in kind. Neeme Jarvi and l’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande are quite a team; I can think of at least two other partnerships which had better get off their laurels.
