Concert Review: The Hallé with Kahchun Wong at the Royal Concert Hall

An online acquaintance in America still talks about a once-in-a-lifetime Murray Perahia concert at Carnegie Hall which Perahia had to withdraw from after sustaining a hand injury. Stephen Hough stood in for him. The sting of disappointment at not seeing Perahia disappeared, he said, the moment Hough started playing. That was in 2010. He’s been a devoted fan ever since.

Between his advocacy of Hough, Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto being a personal favourite, and the prospect of a triumphant return to Nottingham of The Hallé under their principal conductor Kahchun Wong made this concert unmissable. With the Royal Concert Hall almost at capacity, it was evidently unmissable for a good chunk of Nottingham as well. And Hough, Wong and The Hallé certainly rewarded their enthusiasm with a programme of three very different works.

First up was Les Preludes, a symphonic poem of some fifteen minutes which I’ve always been a bit indifferent to in its various recorded versions. The main theme lends itself to both the melancholy and the saccharine in terms of interpretation. In the concert hall, however, and particularly with Wong keeping rigid control over the material, it took on a new lease of life. Wong’s podium presence combined the metronomic precision of a Swiss watch and the sculptured grace of a ballroom dancer. He gave the music a weight and dignity that put me in mind of Sir Adrian Boult.

I was glad I’d been able to appreciate his conducting style during the Liszt because I saw none of it during the Emperor Concerto on account of the grand piano being positioned slap bang in front of the podium rather than to the side, as is traditional. Still, I’ve seen Wong conduct Beethoven before - the Eroica and Choral symphonies and I knew that he’d ace it. I’ve said this in a previous review and make no apologies for repeating it: Wong just gets the heroism of Beethoven’s music.

With Hough front and centre, his technical prowess was evident. Decked out in a mandarin jacket that made him look like a slightly more benevolent version of Joseph Wiseman in Dr No, he alternated between the dignified zen-like stillness of Wilhelm Kempff and the occasional emphatic bout of head banging that wouldn’t be out of place at a Rammstein gig. The Emperor is a piece he’s doubtless performed many times and could probably play in his sleep. It was fascinating, then, that he decided to counterpoint Wong and The Hallé’s intricate precision with a full-tilt and even somewhat risky display of bravura. The audience loved him for it!

With Liszt and Beethoven making up a fairly top-heavy first half, Stravinsky’s Firebird, clocking in at just thirty minutes, could have been anti-climactic. Wong made the smart move of using the 1945 orchestration, which expands and refines the previous iterations of the suite. He’s also enough of a showman to know that audiences expect orchestral fireworks from a finale, and concentrated his approach on orchestral colouration and a flamboyant sense of movement. The Emperor Concerto was a hard act to follow, but the Firebird soared.

The Hallé played the Royal Concert Hall, on Wednesday 23rd September 2026.