The Steinways at Davies Symphony Hall have been getting a real workout lately. Spring has brought a virtual festival of great piano music to finish the month of April, featuring brilliant players hosted by the San Francisco Symphony and the Great Performers series. Highlights so far have included the knockout debut of Russian virtuoso Denis Kozhukhin and a rare and intimate visit with poetic master Murray Perahia in a solo recital.
Events culminate this week when rising superstar pianist Igor Levit, born in Russia and raised in Germany, returns to DSH after his debut in 2015 as a Shenson Young Artist. An outspoken critic of the current US President, Levit uses his Twitter account to rail against Trump's politics rather than promoting his own career. It is good to know we are on the same page, but he's preaching to the choir in Northern California, so his appearances, with Principal Conductor of the Metropolitan Opera Fabio Luisi, should be blessedly free of non-musical rhetoric. The program is filled instead with sweeping examples of German Romanticism; Schumann's effusive and lyrical Piano Concerto in A minor and R. Strauss' sunny Aus Italien (From Italy), Symphonic Fantasy, Opus 16. It is about as far from Mar-a-Lago as you can get and still catch a carefree spring break.
Last week's bill at DSH was all-Russian and darker-hued, suitably dramatic and filled with big performances. Colombian conductor Andres Orozco-Estrada made a splashy SFS debut, leading the Orchestra in thrilling performances of Rachmaninoff's magnificent Symphony No. 2.
Born in Medellin, Colombia, and trained in Vienna, Orozco-Estrada currently serves as Music Director of the Houston Symphony and Chief Conductor of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony. Before diving into the lengthy Rachmaninoff in the second half, he took the microphone to make a brief introduction. In perfectly understandable and delightfully accented English, he used the opportunity to express his admiration for the orchestra and the warm and generous welcome he received from the organization and the DSH audience on his first San Francisco appearance.
Rather than adding prefatory comments, he chose to let the music speak for itself, wisely letting his dynamic leadership score a personal interpretive success. I can't recall a more beautifully controlled or expressive live performance of the suave and elegant Rach Second Symphony. The orchestra responded with some of the best playing of the season, and the all-important contributions from the horns were wonderfully impressive.
No one would accuse Rachmaninoff of going over-the-top after a performance like that. Orozco-Estrada emphasized the lush melodic content, recalling Tchaikovsky, but boldly made the narrative more suggestive of high-gloss Sibelius. The heart-stopping melody of the third movement Adagio, almost unbearably beautiful and intense, was shaped with unashamed sentimentality and loving attention to detail. One would have to be made of wood not to respond.
After the joy-ride of the boisterous final movement, Allegro vivace, a patron turned to his seat partner and said, "That's a lot of Rachmaninoff!" But he wasn't complaining. It was a lot, but not a moment too much.
The first half of the evening was exciting too, but in a different way. The typically spiky and fiendishly difficult Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 2 is either a brave or foolhardy choice for a soloist's debut. From the outset, the work signals a tense moodiness. The uneasy opening tune turns fierce, with a long and demanding cadenza that rises to fever pitch.
The atmosphere is sometimes savage, mysterious and frightening, but the composer has a storyline, and the performer must have both technique and insight to make it clear. Denis Kozhukhin delivered on the challenge with a tour de force performance that had me hoping he wouldn't hurt himself or the piano before he was done.
He triumphed with an interpretation that drove the astonished audience wild. The soloist himself appeared unfazed by the ordeal. His encore was an arrangement of a Bach Prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier , which proved he also has a gentler side along with reserves of seemingly limitless energy.