Daniil Trifnov makes heavy weather of Chopin at the Wigmore Hall, plus the rest of December's best concerts

Daniil Trifonov, Wigmore Hall, ★★★☆☆

Tchaikovsky Prize-winner Daniil Trifonov may be only 26, but he already plays with the masterful quality of the seasoned virtuoso. His playing has dazzling brilliance, massive weight and miraculous delicacy, sometimes within the space of a single bar. More than that, he conveys an imperious and well-nigh irresistible certainty in his vision of how a piece should go.

When that vision is convincing, one is happy to surrender to the magic. That was the case in the first half of his recital on Thursday night, an ingeniously programmed sequence in two distinct halves. In the first, Trifonov played half-a-dozen pieces by later composers that were all inspired by Chopin in some way or other; in the second, he returned us to the source of these musings, with Chopin’s titanic B flat minor sonata.

The first half was a delight. Trifonov showed the true virtuoso’s gift of making second-rate music seem first-rate, particularly in the Variations on a Theme of Chopin by the Spanish composer Federico Mompou. These turned Chopin’s exquisitely simple A major Prelude into waltzes, blurry Debussian mood-pieces and sultry evocations of Spain. In lesser hands than Trifonov’s, it could have seemed annoyingly indulgent, but his exquisite sensitivity to voicing allowed the ghost of the original to shine through.

Grieg’s Hommage to Chopin was electrifying in its agitated swirl, Tchaikovsky’s Un Poco di Chopin a proper mazurka, to which Trifonov gave an authentic rhythmic spring. Rachmaninov’s Variations on Chopin’s grandly mysterious C minor Prelude were even more episodic than Mompou’s but again Trifonov elevated them beyond the ordinary, partly by substituting Chopin’s original prelude for Rachmaninov’s flashy ending.

So far, so wonderful. But the performance of Chopin’s sonata in the second half was a different matter. Trifonov’s pianism was as awe-inspiring as ever, and for a moment it seemed as if the sheer emotional extremity of his performance would carry all before it. But nothing wears thin so quickly as extremism, especially when it’s accompanied by the mannerisms of the romantic virtuoso of yesteryear; heavy breathing through clenched teeth, an expression of tormented agony. The first movement seemed wilfully distorted, but that was nothing compared to the Funeral March, which was so massively slow that all connection to the genre of the funeral march was lost. Trifonov has huge talent and musical intelligence, but the world’s adulation isn’t helping him keep his feet on the ground. IH

Daniil Trifonov’s Chopin Evocations is released on DG

BBCSO/Oramo, Barbican ★★★★☆

Back in the days when Finland was more of a cause than a political reality, it was the composer Jean Sibelius and his fellow artists who really gave the country its identity. More often than not, they found their inspiration in the national epic, Kalevala, which is how the backwoods of Karelia came to define the entire nation. So it was fitting that all these influences were felt in this Sibelius programme celebrating the exact centenary of Finnish independence, given by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under its Finnish chief conductor, Sakari Oramo.

But where the occasion might have been marked by others with Finland’s Greatest Hits, Oramo and his orchestra offered something more interesting – even a UK premiere, no mean achievement considering the enduring popularity of Sibelius. There are reasons why his Music for the Press Celebrations (1899) has not caught on, beginning perhaps with an uncatchy title and an uneven score. Yet it was fascinating to hear this work, written to raise money for journalists who had lost their jobs under an aggressive regime of Russification.

Hidden behind the title is nothing less than a patriotic pageant of Finnish history. The score contains the germs of bigger, better ideas the composer went on to develop, and it soars in The Song of Väinämöinen, inspired by the Kalevala’s wizard-like bard. If bells intrude clunkily into the movement depicting the arrival of Christianity, there are jolly festivities and tragic hostilities along the way towards the finale, Finland Awakes – a less polished prototype of the famous Finlandia tone poem. Played with more momentum than usual, amid this rousing, white-knuckle ride it was very moving to sense how the big tune drew such heartfelt conducting from Oramo.

After the interval came further rarities in the form of the Two Serious Melodies for cello and orchestra – straightforwardly attractive pieces contemporaneous with the Fifth Symphony and thus dating from the peak of Sibelius’s creativity. Guy Johnston’s cello sang hauntingly in the Cantique, and Oramo brought out the more searching tone of Devotion, akin to Bruch’s Kol Nidrei. Oramo also drew warm, impassioned playing in the First Symphony.

His ongoing survey is proving one of the most rewarding Sibelius symphony cycles London has heard in years. Steering a clear interpretative path through a work that departs from the traditional trajectory of darkness to light, he showed how Sibelius co-opted the the Russian symphonic model to deliver a message of Finnish resistance. JA

Hear this again on the BBC iPlayer. Sakari Oramo’s next BBCSO concert at the Barbican is on December 10. Details: bbc.co.uk/symphonyorchestra 

London Festival of Contemporary Music, Ambika 3  ★★★☆☆

“Go further” is the rule LCMF has always followed, in the six years of its existence. They’ve taken their audiences into the weirdest spaces from car parks to disused factories, and assailed them with strange spectacles and sounds which push at the boundaries of what music is.

The problem is that the avant-garde is starting to look a bit dated. Venture to the cutting-edge and you’ll probably find someone got there first in about 1960. That odd feeling of history going round in circles crept over me more than once during the current festival, which is taking place in the subterranean gloom of an old materials testing site on the Marylebone Road. The slow drifting sounds of Toshi Ichiyanagi’s Sapporo, composed in 1962, had charmingly old-fashioned electronic sounds mixed in with the wispy, plaintive clarinet and cello sounds. But obsolete tech is all the rage these days, so in fact the piece could have been written yesterday.  

Then there were the pieces that really were written yesterday – speaking somewhat loosely – but could have been written half-a-century ago, like Elizabeth Clark’s Book Concerto in One Act. Twenty or so people stood about in the gloom, reading texts by art theorists and scientists, of different lengths. One by one they dropped out, until only voice was left. It was amusing, but not as elegantly simple as Ligeti’s Poème Symphonique, which did something similar with 100 metronomes in 1962.

Another blast from the past came from music-theatre pioneer Robert Ashley. We heard four of his works, which evoked with stupefying slowness the ennui of American urban life in 1961, or 1983, or 2004 – it was hard to tell the difference.

Much more entertaining in its evocation of everyday banality was Jennifer Walshe’s A Folk Song Collection, a non-stop patter of banal Twitter-style phrases brilliantly recited in different pop song styles by Leo Chadburn. “When Westlife broke up I felt dead inside” got the biggest laugh.

One or two pieces escaped the general air of retreading old ground, by not trying to be cutting-edge. Sarah Hughes’s I Stay Joined conjured a feeling of a slow tender fade into oblivion, played with huge concentration and care – as were all the instrumental pieces – by Apartment House. Most striking of all was Jack Sheen’s Slow Motion Romantics vol. II. The title may have been baffling, but the music itself was a welcome blaze of fierceness, imagined with perfect precision. IH

The London Contemporary Music Festival continues until December 10. Tickets: lcmf.co.uk