Concert review: Pinchas Zukerman (violin, viola) Zurich Chamber Orchestra/Daniel Hope (violin)

Baden-Baden’s Festspielhaus is housed in the town’s historic train station, its box office conveniently operating from the old ticket counter. Inaugurated in 1998, its season is punctuated by several festivals, culminating in the summer with La Capitale d’Été (Summer’s Capital City, the sobriquet by which Baden-Baden used to be known).

The final concert of this year’s iteration featured the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, led with discreet but effective gestures by Daniel Hope from the first violin desk. The reading of Haydn’s ‘London’ Symphony was characterised by brisk tempos and alert articulation. In Mozart’s G major Violin Concerto, Pinchas Zukerman briefly took over conducting duties for the opening tutti. Performed on the 1742 ‘Dushkin’ Guarneri ‘del Gesù’, Zukerman’s interpretation was a heady mix of old-school grandeur – he favoured the traditional first movement cadenza by Sam Franko – and elements of historically informed practice, served with shimmering, silvery sound.

Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante concluded the concert, allowing us to hear Zukerman’s 1670 Guarneri viola (back and ribs are by Andrea of that ilk, the top by his son Giuseppe) alongside Hope’s 1742 ‘Lipiński’ Guarneri ‘del Gesù’. The two soloists didn’t set too much store on achieving an absolute unanimity of phrasing, their ripostes always having that personal touch to set them apart from each other, which made for a most Goethean ‘conversation of reasonable people’. Zukerman then joined the orchestra’s viola section for the well-merited encore, the finale of Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’ Symphony.

Carlos María Solare