Minnesota Orchestra concert finds pianist Emanuel Ax at the peak of his powers

Although his career as a concert pianist has lasted almost a half-century, Emanuel Ax has never acted like a star. When he takes the stage to invariably enthusiastic applause, Ax always acts a bit flummoxed, as if embarrassed by the adulation.

But then he demonstrates why he's among America's most respected pianists, offering emotion-packed performances that shine light into unexpected places, often on familiar repertoire.

Works like Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto, the centerpiece of this weekend's Minnesota Orchestra concerts. On Friday evening, Ax took music that many in the almost-capacity crowd at Minneapolis' Orchestra Hall surely thought they knew well, and found fresh soil to till within the 213-year-old concerto. He may act unassuming, but Ax sounded supremely confident about how he wanted to channel the thoughts and emotions of Beethoven.

It proved the peak of an enriching concert, and that's saying something, for the evening concluded with an almost hourlong journey through one of Dmitri Shostakovich's darkest nights of the soul, his 10th Symphony, a deeply involving and, ultimately, emotionally exhausting piece of music. But German conductor David Afkham and the orchestra maintained their intensity admirably, deservedly earning the second standing ovation of the night.

The first went to Ax, who consistently impressed with his smooth transitions between dynamic extremes. While Afkham was intent on summoning up explosions of sound that orchestras of Beethoven's day couldn't muster, Ax was always there to bring things back down onto gentler terrain. The pianist engaged in warm exchanges with the orchestra's woodwind soloists and proved spellbinding on a sweeping unaccompanied interlude within the slow movement.

But it was a lengthy first-movement cadenza that showed Ax at the peak of his powers. He took the concerto's opening theme, clustered it upon itself as if in an echo chamber, then unleashed it in all sorts of interesting directions: gentle, forceful, complex, simple and, ultimately, peaceful.

Beethoven earned another nod with the concert's opening work, the U.S. premiere of Unsuk Chin's "Subito con Forza." Written in honor of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth, the piece slips familiar snippets from his music into its unpredictable musical collage.

While Beethoven symphonies have become a specialty of the Minnesota Orchestra during the Osmo Vänskä era, the ensemble is also quite expert at those of Shostakovich. His 10th can be pretty relentless in its darkness, particularly in a first-movement struggle between hopelessness and a survivor's sense of well-tempered triumph. The composer's individuality was asserted in the melancholy clarinet of Gabriel Campos Zamora and the sad but resonant French horn calls of Michael Gast.

Composed in 1953 after the death of Shostakovich's nemesis, Josef Stalin, the 10th Symphony sounds like a war-weary work, the opening movement akin to walking through desolate ruins while the second evokes a military march run amok. While I wondered if Afkham was too often pushing the volume levels to the max, he did pull things back in making a delicate dance of the Allegretto.

As for the finale, it may have provided a glimpse of sunshine, but there's a reason it's had music historians scratching their heads for almost 70 years: It sounds completely incongruous to what came before. Nevertheless, the Minnesota Orchestra played it expertly, strengthening its growing reputation for powerful Shostakovich.

Rob Hubbard is a freelance classical music critic. • wordhub@yahoo.com