Diego Matheuz is one of the many success stories of El Sistema. Although just a bit younger than Dudamel, he has a decidedly more disciplined and discerning head on his shoulders. Certainly he hasn't been victim to the same overexposure. After Thursday night's concert, not least the opening performance of the overture to Le nozze di Figaro, finely wrought and bubblingly theatrical, I began to wonder whether the PR juggernaut has backed the wrong Venezuelan.
Matheuz showed marked sensitivity in collaborating with Pires in the C minor Concerto. The orchestra, as on Tuesday night, entered a little below the level that Pires required. Yet bolstered by her strident entry, Matheuz responded in kind. Here both the orchestra and Pires benefited enormously from the immediacy of the QEH acoustic and atmosphere. Looking ahead to the Fifth Symphony and beyond to Brahms, the concerto had great tenacity, before embracing the buffa of Figaro once more in the Finale.
The last time I heard the 'Eroica' in London was a slack and lacklustre performance by no less than Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra. There were no such complaints here. Theatricality was again much in evidence, intensifying the crescendos in the first movement and making the silences in the Funeral March like appear like crackling synapses. Orchestra Mozart's superb woodwind and horns delighted in the Scherzo, with just a dose of crudeness, before Matheuz launched into the Finale. Wild string playing, right at the heel of the bow, whispered spaciousness when it was required and all-guns-blazing virtuosity brought this much stronger display of these forces' abilities to an impressive close.
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