Still one of my favourite concert works this, in fact, I re-visited it for a recital about a year ago, and still try to keep it practiced. It does after all, have everything:
- moments of showiness,
- a tender, rapturous melody in the middle section, and
- sumptuous harmonies throughout
A solid performance certainly here from van Hoef, although for my tastes, quite a bit of it was rushed, and gave the impression at times that he had somewhere else to be. On the flip side of that, the labouring over the penultimate chord was (I felt) overdone, so in that sense, the tempi and use of rubato overall were a little inconsistent. Also, the three main points I mentioned above don't appear to have been equally brought out. For my ears, there seems to be more emphasis on the showy bits, and a little less on the harmonies (but one could always put that down to the keen spirit of youth - I seem to recall doing the same thing when I first learned it).
On the plus side, there is plenty of tasteful, youthful exuberance in this interpretation, and it gives a different perspective of this work as composed by the aging (and ailing) Cesar Franck. Gert van Hoef is certainly worth keeping an eye on IMO. As with his improvisations, it will be interesting to hear what he does with this piece in, maybe another 5 - 10 years time?