Some concerts often prove elusive to write about.
This was one of them. In the event, his performance of Brahms' titanic second left me largely unmoved. Pollini is a pianist who lives very near the edge of perfectionism and possibly because of this what this performance lacked was a sense of struggle. Pollini's mastery of the keyboard is so complete one wonders exactly why he can't fill this concerto with the melancholic mellowness, the summer-like darkness it needs in truly great performances of it. There was sublime understatement in the third movement's cello-piano exchange, but coming so soon after the second movement's tussles between orchestra and pianist it didn't seem quite sublime enough.