Whenever a\u00a0Beethoven piano concerto with\u00a0a prominent\u00a0soloist appears on an orchestral\u00a0program, it is likely to be the highlight of the evening. Yet concert protocol dictates that\u00a0something more traditionally “substantial,” like a symphony, has to come last, with the piano concerto appearing before the intermission. And because the concerto is likely to be shorter than the symphony, something short\u00a0generally has to be added up front to pad out the pre-intermission period.<\/p>\n
In the past few days, the San Francisco Symphony<\/a> and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra<\/a> handled this situation in two different\u00a0ways, both persuasive. For conductor Edwin Outwater and the San Francisco musicians, the solution was to go entirely with Beethoven. Thus Orion Weiss’s performance of the Fifth Piano Concerto was bracketed by the rarely heard Overture to King Stephen<\/em> (one of Beethoven’s pieces of incidental music for the stage) and, at the back end, the always-thrilling Seventh Symphony. This was a sage if safe choice. Edward Gardner, conducting the Mostly Mozart orchestra at Lincoln Center, opted for a more adventurous\u00a0approach, starting his program with a snippet of Mozart (the Masonic Funeral Music in C Minor, a beautiful\u00a0thing\u00a0I’d never heard live before) and ending with Schubert’s Fifth Symphony.\u00a0This set up\u00a0the Fourth Piano Concerto, performed by Jeremy Denk, as the clear jewel in the crown, while also extending our sense of how closely Beethoven’s work was connected with that of his eminent forerunners and followers\u2014a connection that was duly cemented when Denk performed the lovely\u00a0slow movement to Mozart’s K545 sonata as his\u00a0encore.<\/p>\n Comparing great piano soloists is as much of a mug’s game as comparing great Beethoven concertos: it’s the proverbial apples and oranges, with distinct virtues and risks in each case. (And the virtues wouldn’t be so commendable, of course, if the high-wire risks of these performances\u00a0weren’t so very much in evidence.) But someone has to be the mug, so I will volunteer.<\/p>\n Orion Weiss’s\u00a0solo in the Fifth Concerto, which I heard last Thursday night, was an exemplary exercise in intensity.\u00a0The piano and the huge orchestra seemed to be fully equal partners, as\u00a0the individual player held his\u00a0own against the vast group. There was perfect coordination between their two parts, but the deep communion\u2014the sense of intimate accord\u2014was between the pianist and his instrument. Moving his lips in a constant silent exhortation\u00a0as he played, Weiss seemed to be crooning privately to the piano, urging it on to greater and greater accomplishments\u00a0as he hunched over the keyboard. When he fell silent and the orchestra took up its role, he relaxed into a seemingly\u00a0passive state, and then, when it was his turn again, he came back to life in a thrillingly\u00a0demonic\u00a0fashion.<\/p>\n In Denk’s case, on the other hand, the entire concerto, both the orchestral and<\/em> the piano parts, seemed to be emanating from his body. In his non-playing moments,\u00a0he watched Gardner attentively, occasionally\u00a0twitching his shoulders or his head in sync\u00a0with the orchestra’s most emphatic notes, remaining\u00a0alive and attentive to every turn in the music. And when he played, he made it look almost easy:\u00a0even though\u00a0we could see and hear how complicated the solo\u00a0passages were,\u00a0Denk’s own relaxed and companionable relation to the piano transmitted itself to us. His rhythms and dynamics were much more eccentric and variable than Weiss’s,\u00a0and this too suited the performance, for the Fourth Concerto is not so much a meeting of equal partners\u00a0as\u00a0an orchestral piece into which some kind of miraculous beast has been introduced\u2014a winged horse, say, descending onto a racetrack of normal thoroughbreds. Jeremy Denk’s Pegasus was a wonder to behold, and I am exceedingly grateful to have been there on Saturday night to witness it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Whenever a\u00a0Beethoven piano concerto with\u00a0a prominent\u00a0soloist appears on an orchestral\u00a0program, it is likely to be the highlight of the evening. Yet concert protocol dictates that\u00a0something more traditionally “substantial,” like a symphony, has to come last, with the piano concerto appearing … Continue reading