Simplicity from Complexity

There did not appear to be an obvious theme presiding over the programme of Joana Mallwitz’s debut guest appearance with the Berlin Philharmonic: the four works – Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto and Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler Symphony were bookended by the overture to Prokofiev’s War and Peace and Ravel’s La Valse – spanned both the first half of the twentieth century and the breadth of the European continent. What gave the evening its satisfying cohesion was, very simply, the quality of its performances: if Anna Vinnitskaya’s breathtaking journey through the Rachmaninov was the evening’s most conspicuous highlight, it was Ms Mallwitz’s quietly flawless reading of the Hindemith that gave the evening its distinction.

The opening work, the overture to Prokofiev’s infrequently-performed Tolstoy adaptation, did exactly what an overture…