Pianist gives flawless Chopin performance
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
After observing a moment of silence at Heinz Hall for the fallen in Las Vegas, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra performed a concert of piano music Friday night.
Not literally piano music — rather, the concert featured a piano scherzo by Mussorgsky that the composer later orchestrated, Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Minor, and a symphony by one of the greatest pianists of all time: Rachmaninoff.
Guest conductor Christoph König led the PSO, with Sean Lee filling in as concertmaster as the orchestra continues its search.
Yulianna Avdeeva, firstprize winner of the Chopin piano competition in 2010, performed as soloist. Hers was a lyrical presentation — she played the dotted melodies of the opening movement almost as an aria. I hear this movement as more militant, but Ms. Avdeeva was convincing and secure in her gentler interpretation.
Her playing was stunning in the second movement, at once subtle and restrained yet brimming with vigor, and her finale crackled. Even in the most pyrotechnic of runs, Ms. Avdeeva’s voicing was flawless.
Theorchestra matched the expressive qualities of her first movement, and Mr. König coaxed a warmth of sound from the strings that added just the right touch of ardor to the second movement. Occasionally, however, starts were a bit muddled, particularly in the tutti sections of the third movement, and the final bars came off anticlimactic compared to the giddy enthusiasm of Ms. Avdeeva’sperformance.
Rachmaninoff’’s Symphony No. 2 in E minor filled out the second half of the program. A thickly scored work, this symphony runs a full hour in length and demands careful attention to balance throughout. Mr. König’s ear for the piece was uncanny, and he guided the musicians through Rachmaninoff’s great blocks of sound and more delicate writing with judiciousdynamics.
The horns sounded splendid in the second movement, and their Straussian (the composer, not the philosopher)riffs in the finale electrified the performance. This symphony can feel repetitive at times in its undulating melodies and the close rhythmic relationships between the movements, but not so Friday night—the PSO gave each motif distinct character and maintained a strong trajectory throughout the piece, revvingto a gripping finish.
Mr. König opened the concert with Mussorgsky’s Scherzo in B-flat Major, a pleasant enough romp of a piece. It was a PSO premiere, and one gets the impression that the orchestra is having to search hard for repertoire it hasn’t played before. Certainly, there’s nothing untowardabout the scherzo, but nor is there much to recommendit.
Similar to the Rachmaninoff, the opening bars weren’t quite perfectly tight, but the orchestra handled the rest of the piece with aplomb. This concert repeats Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon.