Czech Philharmonic Orchestra/Ashkenazy/ Grimaud, Barbican Hall, London <br></br>Fretwork, Wigmore Hall, London

Palate or palette? All you need to do is taste it with your ears

If one of the most gratifying aspects of my job over the last two and half years has been to discover a taste for the specific sonority of Central European orchestras, one of the most challenging has been to find a way to convey that sound quality in words. Colour – a rich cobalt blue – rarely goes far enough. Temperature – warm to hot – or texture – supple, smooth and pelt-like – likewise. Which leaves us with flavour. Call it wilfully synaesthetic if you must, but to my mind it's the taste-buds that respond when a really good Central European orchestra plays; a larder full of cloves and plums, cinnamon, nutmeg, garlic and paprika. Yummy stuff, no? No. Not without a magnificent chef to blend and balance these ingredients.

The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra's appearance with Vladimir Ashkenazy at the Barbican this week was a frustrating glimpse of immense orchestral potential squandered by mediocre direction. Still, having heard Ashkenazy conduct several fine orchestras over recent years, each with highly distinctive sonorities, I knew what to expect. After all, if Ashkenazy's Mahler sounds like Rachmaninov – super-smooth, so-so and way too sugary – why shouldn't his Janacek or his Dvorak? Only a die-hard slavophile would get too worked up about Talich's densely arranged Orchestral Suite from Janacek's Cunning Little Vixen – though a little Ivan Fischer-esque spike or Mackerrassian invention would have helped to diffuse the sentimentality – or Dvorak's obviously commercial Slavonic Rhapsody (Op. 45 No. 3) and ghastly Hussite Overture, but some distinction between the two composers would have been helpful.

Only in Hélène Grimaud's astonishingly exposed and concentrated account of Ravel's G major Piano Concerto did the CPO attain real focus and cast off Ashkenazy's catch-all emotionalism. From her, thankfully, they took their lead; adapting their sound to a cleaner, clearer model and displaying some stylistic flexibility. But Grimaud's understated Ravel – the seeming opposite of Ashkenazy's – is the stuff of dreams; ferociously precise, magnetically private and thoughtfully parsed. Were you to wish for an illustration of the tension between discipline and emotion, you could see no better example than this. Avoiding saccharine sobbing or easy, sleazy sexuality – the path of least resistance when it comes to this composer – Grimaud's playing achieved an acute sensuality through intellectual rigour; carefully spinning the hesitant sub-clauses of the Adagio's attenuated melody into a structure of rapt emotional honesty; each comma thick with meaning, each note precise in its relation to the former and the following.

With so much potential, the CPO could indeed be one of Central Europe's greatest orchestras, but not, I think, under their current Chief Conductor. After four decades of fame as the world's cuddliest concert pianist, Ashkenazy is likely to enjoy several more as the world's cuddliest conductor; the anti-Gergiev, if you like. He's cheerful, reasonably efficient, and apparently self-effacing; not given to grand gestures or driven tempi, whether grindingly slow or maniacally fast. He's also loyal, which must come as a great relief to an orchestra that has had such trouble hanging on to their Chief Conductors, and an established name. He is not, however, one of the world's clearest technicians – as the CPO's often needlessly ragged entries clearly display – nor is he one of the world's greatest musical stylists, though that – plus a good deal of excitement, imagination and energy – is what this rich, supple, headily coloured and virtuosic orchestra dearly needs and very probably deserves.

Damp weather, eh? Horrid stuff, most depressing, and hell on the hair. But how much worse is a week of drizzle for those Luddites of the string playing world; the viol players? All that tuning, all that re-tuning, all that re-re-tuning, and still those gut strings stretch or thicken or slacken or whatever it is they do in damp weather, without so much as a splodge of FrizzEase to help. Yes, pity poor Fretwork, whose recital of Bach's monstrously difficult – on viols, that is – Art of Fugue just happened to coincide with some of this year's least viol-friendly weather.

Fretwork are without a doubt one the most expressive and ambitious of this country's viol consorts, but last Friday that expressiveness had scant chance to shine, so poor were the conditions for their instruments. Gorgeous, fleeting moments of sweetness and joy and musicality and invention peeped through the intonation problems – particularly in the six-part movements – but even given the adverse weather, one has to wonder whether the Art of Fugue is an over-ambitious project for a viol consort? Of course, no one can agree over what instrumentation Bach had in mind for these fugues, which leaves them up for grabs for anyone from keyboard players to a mixed consort of wind and strings. But viols, which by the time of composition were restricted either to continuo use or specific obbligato affects just about everywhere in Europe bar Denmark, seem particularly ill-suited to this material. Or are they? I'll be watching out for a repeat performance somewhere nice and dry, like Arizona, but in the meantime I'm off to the lab to develop an anti-frizz lotion for viols. GutInstinct®, anyone?

a.picard@independent.co.uk