It isn’t every pianist who’s going to encore with a Keith Jarrett improv from the early 1980s, but Orion Weiss has the kind of omnivorous approach to music that makes such things possible, and enjoyable to boot.
In his recital appearance Wednesday afternoon at the Duncan Theatre’s Stage West, the 30-year-old pianist from suburban Cleveland gave his appreciative audience not just Jarrett, but a near-world premiere by a young American composer as well as rare Martinů and Liszt. He showed himself to be an enthusiastic, committed player, with strong fingers and technique, and a musical personality that was comfortable with all kinds of repertoire, though perhaps more effective in up-tempo muscularity then brooding introspection.
Weiss’ program, which opened the Duncan’s series, consisted primarily of a series of toccatas, a smart, interesting approach that allowed him to choose refreshingly offbeat material. The Toccata in C minor (BWV 911) of J.S. Bach, while well-known to pianists, is almost never heard in the concert hall these days, and Weiss did a nervy thing in opening with it.
This was a somewhat uneven performance of the Bach, with plenty of good digital work in the spinning rapid notes that run through this piece, but in the big fugal sections his touch was a little less sure, not in notes (aside from a stray gap while sounding the theme), but in communicative power. Tempos were good, and the piece was well-paced, but the fugal playing was somewhat dry; the individual voices didn’t have enough emphasis to fully make their case.
The Liszt Toccata (S. 197a), a very brief, strange work from 1879, is a blur in C major, and Weiss played it winningly, using it an intro to the new piece, Michael Brown’s Constellations and Toccata, written for Weiss and with a title that plays on the night-sky significance of his given name. Brown writes with strength and force, opening the first section of the piece with granitic, clusterish chords amid a sparse, space-filled narrative, then moving to a toccata that starts in the lower registers.
It’s a jumpy, explosive bit of writing that ends in an exhausted whisper, and Weiss gave it total engagement. This is a pianist who knows how to create drama at the keyboard and command attention, and his immersion in the music helped him give a persuasive performance of this intriguing new piece.
The Schumann Toccata (Op. 7), another blurry piece in C major, closed the Schumann group that came next, and Weiss gave it an expansive, athletic reading that made the composer’s remarkably forward-looking writing reach out and grab the listener by the collar. His control of the music was excellent here, with a beautifully executed series of right-hand octaves in the middle that sang out over a well-managed background.
He preceded the Toccata with five sections of Schumann’s Bunte Blätter collection (Op. 99), in which the one rapid piece was the most interesting, because Weiss played it with superb finger control and a nice snap in the bass figures. But the other four short pieces, all of them down-tempo, had the same kind of surface-only poetry that made them attractive only, and not moving. One wants Weiss to lean into the music a little more, to make it speak.
One of the Blätter is the source of the theme that Johannes Brahms chose for his set of Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann (Op. 9), a searching, inventive work that should figure more prominently on concert programs. Weiss opened his second half with a good, solid interpretation of the piece, with fleet arpeggios in the sixth variation and gratifying attention to rhythmic variety, such as in the second variation. Some more color, shade a more precise conception of each variation would have been welcome here, so that the audience could appreciate Brahms’ transformations more clearly.
The recital proper ended with the Fantasie et Toccata (H. 281) of Bohuslav Martinů, written in 1940 as the composer was fleeing the Nazis and looking for passage to the United States. It is a vigorous, quirky showpiece, with a wide-ranging, glittering fantasy and a restless toccata section that sounds like a logical outgrowth of the fantasy rather than a piece with a separate character.
The work plays well to Weiss’ strengths of rhythmic vitality and clean passagework, and he infused it with ingratiating wit and sparkle, even though the piece is more along the line of tirelessly serious rather than lighthearted.
Weiss’ encore, he said, was “like a toccata,” and then played an untitled improvisation from jazzman Keith Jarrett’s 1984 solo concert in Tokyo. This fun little back-and-forth chordal shimmy over a quasi-habanera bass has a lot in common with the relentlessness of the Martinů and the dazzle of the Schumann, and it fit the rest of the recital beautifully. Weiss was particularly good here in the exuberant way he played the driving, ecstatic lines Jarrett constructed for the right hand. – Greg Stepanich
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Not every fit of pique leads to good results, but the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is the exception that proved a jewel.
Back in 1945, with the war over, Sir Thomas Beecham returned to England from four years in the States to claim his right as president of Manchester’s Hallé Orchestra to conduct it. Its conductor, Sir John Barbirolli, would have none of it, holding a grudge against Beecham for something he said about Barbirolli’s stint at the New York Philharmonic.
Not to be bested, Beecham approached the Royal Philharmonic Society of London, which gave out awards to composers, and offered to build an orchestra for them. It played its first concert in 1946, and today is led by the Swiss conductor Charles Dutoit.
On Wednesday night, the RPO played the first of two concerts at the Kravis Center as part of the venue’s Regional Arts series. Eighty-two strong, they played to an exacting standard rarely heard in most concert halls. But then one has to remember that London has nearly a dozen such professional orchestras of this caliber competing for audience in its six large venues.
Accompanying them on their American tour was conductor and solo violinist Pinchas Zukerman. Although this intelligent group of players could have gone conductor-less, Zukerman had a rare old time leading and playing the Violin Concerto No. 1 (in G minor, Op. 26) of Max Bruch.
Appropriating a “Mr. Cool” approach, Zukerman spun around and around, playing, then conducting, with his unwieldy bow. It took some getting used to seeing his front, and then his back. But there was much synergy between soloist and orchestra despite the distraction.
Zukerman’s playing was superb in the beginning; he produced some lovely tonal quality, though it sometimes veered close to schmaltz. Toward the end, however, the faster passages tended to be delivered with difficulty. If he lost his way a little, the proper emphasis returned in the final chords.
Now it was time for the orchestra to shine in the Symphony No. 4 (in E minor, Op. 98) of Brahms. They played vigorously and with enviable refinement. The first and second violins bowed together with military precision and produced a tone quality of such depth and sweetness I wondered if they’d keep it up. They did. As each section got to grips with Brahms’ brilliant counterpoint, answering one another, back and forth, one had to marvel at the quality of their playing.
The second movement has a lovely opening with horns and winds riding tunefully over plucked strings. Accentuating the melody, the winds finish it off. The strings pick up their bows and begin to play, violas and cellos are given a lush, elegiac, drawn-out song, like a walk in a summer garden. It is indeed a glorious moment for the cellos, and they rose to the occasion superbly.
The third movement opened with a thrilling attack, then rolled along quickly and merrily, brilliantly played. It was over in a flash, and then it was on to the difficult finale, Brahms’ nod to the musical past. Using the passacaglia form of variation, it opens with horns and over timpani drumbeats. While the orchestral sound was magnificent, Zukerman’s tempo was much too slow.
A certain degree of ad libitum is understandable, but the flute solo was almost mawkish in its interpretation of the main theme, as the flutist dragged it along and spun it out. Thank goodness the lively ending was near to hand: It dispelled the memory of the flute player’s self-indulgence and the orchestra received a standing ovation and many well-deserved bravos from the large house. — Rex Hearn