Mozart performed to perfection

Thus, the orchestra's sonority had a string/wind balance with sharper edges at significant entrances - especially in Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture, whose moodiness was accentuated by the lack of sonic frosting heard in higher-vibrato performances.

Thanks to his close rapport with Bach, Anderszewski gave particular precision to Mozart, even creating tiny jolts with the smallest change of rhythm. He took the usual dark washes of sound out of Mozart's Piano Concerto in D minor (K. 466) and made the notes refreshingly speak for themselves.

The second movement's music-box melody avoided the usual cloying complacency with Anderszewski's sense of inner impetus. Thematic reprises in Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 27 (K. 595) often acquired dramatic new meaning thanks to the pianist's coloristic precision. He is the supreme Mozartean.

Anderszewski's conducting from the keyboard, though, seemed to spread him thin rather than inspiring fuller engagement with the music. Smart interpretive decisions had been made in rehearsals, though Anderszewski's conducting couldn't have added much to the performance with the piano partly cutting off his view of the orchestra.

In Anderszewski's absence, non-Mozartean pieces were more effectively led by concertmaster Alexander Janiczek, who signaled cues by shoulder movements more than any traditional gestures. That worked well in selections from Beethoven's Creatures of Prometheus ballet, which shares important motifs with the composer's Symphony No. 3 ("Eroica").

More curiously, the music shows a genius wholly unsuited for dance music but writing it anyway. On Halloween, I saw a police dog costumed in a tutu - a good metaphor for Beethoven in ballet.