A dance suite for a comedy troupe, a neoclassical concerto and a requiem for a composer’s mother — three comparatively rare works — provided effective ballast to Beethoven’s omnipresent Symphony No. 5 at Friday’s Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra concert.
Osmo Vanska, Grammy Award-winning music director of the Minnesota Orchestra, directed the concert, launching into the evening with Kabalevsky’s Suite from “The Comedians” before dancing his way through Stravinsky’s Concerto in D for Violin and Orchestra.
Internationally acclaimed violinist Vilde Frang gave a robust Pittsburgh debut, delivering Stravinsky’s music with the intimacy of a chamber music performance featuring members of the PSO. Each of the concerto’s four movements opens with the same violin chord, and Ms. Frang gave each enough individual nuance to welcome an entirely new aesthetic to every movement, playing through the gentler passages and fierier lines with poise and drama.
The cyclic nature of the concerto’s movements paired well with Beethoven’s Fifth: four movements based on the most recognizable classical rhythmic motif in history (short-short-short-long).
Friday’s was not a Beethoven you casually nodded to on your way out of Heinz Hall. Rather, the performance grabbed you by the shoulders and demanded attention. One of the hallmarks of Beethoven’s style is his propensity to jump from very soft to very loud very quickly, and Mr. Vanska and the PSO achieved a remarkable decibel range within split seconds. They maintained a locomotive rhythmic drive throughout the symphony, from the sumptuous cello opening of the Andante movement, the joyous, frenetic (as Mr. Vanska interpreted it) melody passed from basses to violins in the Scherzo and the jubilant horn calls of the outer movements.
The concert opener, the Suite from “The Comedians” was a delightful romp, with some droll, mocking brass lines and nimble wind solos. The strings weren’t quite together in multiple passages (particularly the Waltz movement), however, perhaps a reminder that the orchestra needs to hire a full-time concertmaster finally. Also on the program, Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara’s “A Requiem in Our Time” for brass, timpani and percussion proved unsettling in the best way, an opportunity to showcase the PSO brass of which they took ample advantage.
This performance repeats Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. Tickets: $20-$104; pittsburghsymphony.org; 412-392-4900.
Jeremy Reynolds: jreynolds@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1634; twitter: @Reynolds_PG. Mr. Reynolds' work at the Post-Gazette is supported in part by a grant from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Getty Foundation, and the Rubin Institute.
First Published: February 10, 2018, 4:00 p.m.
