Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra, Melvyn Tan (piano) Barry Wordsworth (conductor)

Normally it would be Rimsky-Korsakov’s exotic ‘Scheherazade’ that gets the audience flooding in, eager to enjoy John Bradbury astounding us with his sensuous arabesques and Maestro Wordsworth wringing every ounce of romantic emotion from the BPO (and even jettisoning his baton in the excitement of it all), but no, it was the spectacular Melvyn Tan that they came to hear, and they weren’t disappointed. Surely nobody plays Chopin’s 2nd Piano Concerto with a lighter touch and makes such musical sense of those gentle, impossibly extended lines? Then for a most generous encore he played, with breath-taking ease, Liszt’s ‘Un Sospiro’.

Dome Concert Hall, 14 February 2016

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