Last night’s concert at Severance Hall
was, for me at least, the concert of the season thus far. It featured both the familiar and the exotic,
with a guest conductor and pianist who’ve validated their credentials at
Severance time and again. Daniel was
working, so I brought my co-worker Michael for his first visit to Severance
Hall.
The familiar began when guest conductor
Alan
Gilbert took to the stage to lead Haydn’s Symphony No. 100 in G major. Working with a reduced string section, Gilbert
kept the music moving and the textures lithe, particularly in the work’s second
movement: an allegretto which some conductors tend to drag. Never rushing, Gilbert left room for moments
of whimsy and demonstrations of Haydn’s earthy humor.
The title page of Busoni’s
Concerto
Thirty years ago, while living in
Boston, I heard Garrick
Ohlsson play Busoni’s monumental Piano Concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra
under Cristoph von Dohnányi at that city’s Symphony Hall. To say that my 21-year-old self was astonished
by both composition and performance would be stating the bare minimum. Naturally, I bought Ohlsson’s recording of
the work, made around the same time with the same collaborators at Masonic Auditorium
for the Telarc label – and it has been my go-to recording of the piece (there aren’t
that many) ever since.
When comparing performances 30 years
apart (and not having a recording of the earlier event) one is relying on a
memory of a memory. Now 51, I’ve come to
accept my memory is not as reliable as it once was. So I will contrast last night’s performance
with the recording, which I listened to again a few weeks ago. The overall conception is similar, with no drastic
changes in overall tempo. The
differences mainly lay in the greater discipline with which the pianist
employed rhetorical devices. At the same
time, Ohlsson played with greater freedom, a broader tonal palette, and more use
of inner voices in the work’s quieter moments – with no loss of virtuosity in
the Concerto’s more extroverted sections.
Ohlsson, a big bear of a man who looks younger than his 70 years, is one
of the most natural of pianists active today and a pleasure to watch as well as
hear. He always seems entirely at ease
at the keyboard, even while hurling octaves, chords, and keyboard leaps in
every direction. The only hint of strain
was when he momentarily pulled out a handkerchief to deal with some
perspiration. Ohlsson, unlike many of his
colleagues, is content to play the piano (he used the Hamburg Steinway) and not the audience. (What a pity this concert wasn’t given the video
treatment Lang Lang’s recent appearance here received.) Gilbert kept the work’s sprawling
orchestration under magnificent control while still pushing things to the
limits – particularly in the mad tarantella of the fourth movement, which was a
textbook accelerando. This was a performance to refresh the memory
and re-astonish at the same time – and pianist, conductor, and chorus director Lisa Wong (yes, the work includes a chorus), were brought out for numerous curtain calls.
A well-deserved ovation
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