BPO – A New World – Junyan Chen (piano), Joanna MacGregor (conductor)

This concert season began so quietly with the gently lulling opening of Rachmaninoff’s 3rd Piano Concerto. What a pretty deception, as all three works in this programme climax in the most extraodinary explosions of energy! Junyan Chen looked so tiny and delicate as she raised the piano stool to a comfortable height, but within a few moments her steel fingers were wringing such intense chords from the guts of the Steinway. Rachmaninoff 3 is famous for the extreme demands it places on the pianist. It’s an emotional roller-coaster that Junyan Chen and Maestra MacGregor were determined we should experience, endure and enjoy. The sumptuous ‘big tunes’, so Russian, so soulful, were given their full orchestral breadth; the energetic rush to final climax was all the more exhilarating for being so firmly controlled, indeed, held back until the final release. Wonderful! How do you follow that? Well, Junyan Chen, daintily setting down her bouquet, not even out of breath, recalled George Gershwin’s birthday two days before and sat down again to play a delicious arrangement of The man I love. That is how to get the whole Dome audience to love you!

Junyan Chen

It’s always a good sign when the Sunday soloist stays for the second half, and I’m not surprised that Junyan Chen took time for MacGregor’s interpretation of Ravel’s ravishing La Valse, a sensuous parody of the Viennese waltz. As if the BPO hadn’t already given their all, they now had their own challenge. As rich with Belle Époque Romanticism as the Rachmaninoff, this lush work was completed in 1919, after the Great War, so the dance ends with a formidably orchestrated catastrophe – challenge met!

Joanna MacGregor – credit Pal Hansen

Joanna MacGregor’s cheerful introduction gave the orchestra and audience a welcome breather before the exquisite complexities of The Miraculous Mandarin Suite, Bartók’s lethal little ballet. MacGregor enticed all kinds of sleazy characterisation from the BPO soloists, and special credit must go to James Gilbert whose clarinet portrayed the seductive street girl so voluptuously. The concert ended with another breath-taking cataclysm as the eerie Mandarin is finally murdered. The orchestra most certainly earned their cheers and applause and in the audience I, for one, was quite exhausted!

The dynamic BPO’s 2025-26 season has started as it clearly means to continue with extraordinary virtuosity and exciting programming – and after all this afternoon’s rich musical fare, what theme was rattling round in my head? – the staggering, intoxicating pulse of Ravel’s waltz.

Brighton Dome Concert Hall,
28 September 2025
Andrew Connal

Rating:

Rachmaninoff – Piano Concerto no. 3 in D minor
Ravel – La Valse
Bartók – The Miraculous Mandarin Suite

Junyan Chen : piano
Brighton Philharmonic : Orchestra
Joanna MacGregor : conductor