How fortunate for Twin Cities classical music lovers that Garrick Ohlsson has been such a frequent visitor. The big, powerful pianist made his Minnesota Orchestra debut in 1971, and, with this weekend's concerts, he becomes the rare soloist to appear with the orchestra in six decades.
But Ohlsson deserves our admiration for a lot more than his longevity, and Friday evening's concert made that abundantly clear. He remains an imaginative interpreter and a technically sublime player, one who invites you on adventures and leaves you grateful for the opportunity.
On Friday, it was Beethoven's First Piano Concerto that provided the platform for Ohlsson's artistry. And it proved the tremendously satisfying centerpiece of a concert that launched with a touching elegy from the pen of English composer Philip Herbert and concluded with an expansive symphony by Anton Bruckner that had much to recommend it, but fell short of being the rewarding journey you can have with Bruckner at its best.
The concert's involving opening piece was Philip Herbert's "Elegy: In Memoriam — Stephen Lawrence," inspired by an architecture student who was murdered on a London street in 1993 for the color of his skin. Like Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings," it employs no winds to draw you into its sad atmosphere. But whereas the Barber is intense, Herbert's piece is more comforting and reflective, and it was given a gripping performance by conductor Juanjo Mena and the orchestra.
Reflective is a good description of Ohlsson's approach to the first of Beethoven's five piano concertos. He looked to be absorbed in meditation as the orchestra played its opening strains, and, when his entrance arrived, his body barely moved, his hands reaching out to coax from the keys some deliciously smooth phrasing.
Ohlsson's first-movement cadenza proved the concert's peak, starting as a kind of call-and-response between his left hand and his right, then becoming a dramatic journey through several distinctly different moods. By contrast, his soft slow movement was straightforward yet gentle. It was a mood he maintained even when the tempo quickened on the finale, his last cadenza something like a lullaby.
A well-deserved standing ovation from an ample Orchestra Hall audience inspired an exquisitely beautiful Chopin nocturne that became a wistful waltz in Ohlsson's gifted hands.
While the Minnesota Orchestra has delivered some memorable Bruckner symphonies — they were a specialty of former music director Stanislaw Skrowaczewski — rarely has this orchestra explored the composer's Sixth. In fact, this weekend's concerts mark just the fourth time in the orchestra's 120 years that it's found its way onto a program.
Why? Well, perhaps because the Sixth can be quite enigmatic. Bruckner has never been regarded as a master of melody, his music more about textures and flow than delivering catchy earworms. If Beethoven is a composer whose genius largely involved assembling fragments into astounding wholes, Bruckner is even more deeply committed to that method of making music. At their most transporting, his symphonies can be mesmerizing.
Alas, Mena and the orchestra didn't take me on the journey I desired. This version of the Sixth blared and bellowed too often, dipping down to whispers before inevitably erupting again. Only the Adagio could be called an unqualified success, a hypnotic funeral march that exposed the stylistic thread connecting Bruckner to Richard Wagner before him and Gustav Mahler after.
Minnesota Orchestra
With: Conductor Juanjo Mena and pianist Garrick Ohlsson
What: Works by Philip Herbert, Beethoven and Anton Bruckner
When: 8 p.m. Saturday
Where: Orchestra Hall, 1111 Nicollet Mall, Mpls.
Tickets: $30-$104, available at 612-371-5656 or minnesotaorchestra.org
Rob Hubbard is a Twin Cities classical music writer. Reach him at wordhub@yahoo.com.
