Yan Pascal Tortelier’s charming pairing of Mozart and Franck.

Sydney Opera House, Concert Hall
Friday April 10, 2015

César Franck’s Symphonic Variations (1885) has long been one of my favourite works, ever since I studied it as part of the HSC syllabus in high school. (Do students still study such great pieces of music? I wonder.) It is a miracle of formal thinking, even though it is outwardly rhapsodic. The piano part is more difficult than it seems, since the piece is in the tricky key of F#, but it held no terrors for the French-Canadian pianist Louis Lortie. His piano sparkled – the top octaves of the keyboard are used a lot in this work – and his playing of the gentle moments was appropriately introspective and sensitive. The hushed variation of rippling arpeggio figures with pianissimo strings, just before the final section, was beautifully done.

The concert opened with Mozart’s Symphony No 31, K297, subtitled Paris because it was written to impress the denizens of that city. Yan Pascal Tortelier’s approach was more genial than driven. Mozart’s sly humour shone through, especially in the finale, proving that Haydn was not the only Classical composer blessed with a sense of...