Review: Ohlsson, ‘Fifth’ star for Charlotte Symphony
When I interviewed Emanuel Ax about his upcoming Charlotte recital, he spoke admiringly of peers who’d absorbed more of the vast piano literature than he has. “My friend Garrick Ohlsson, he plays everything,” he said with a laugh. “And he plays it well.”
The Belk Theater audience saw the proof in the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra’s all-Beethoven concert, one of four programs this season with Sunday matinees.
Ohlsson has long been associated with Chopin: He’s the only American to win first prize in the International Chopin Piano Competition, and he contributed many recordings to the EMI label’s Complete Chopin Edition.
Yet he won his 2007 Grammy for Beethoven sonatas, and his playing Friday showed why.
He opened the Fourth Piano Concerto with quiet elegance and went on in that fresh, attractive vein. Just as Mozart wrote two concertos Beethoven played (numbers 20 and 24), Mozart could have performed this one, had he’d lived until its 1808 premiere. He might have handled it as Ohlsson did: with delicacy and warmth in the first movement, understated melancholy in the second and a dignified final rondo, though Mozart would have been more playful there.
Ohlsson’s fleeting smile accompanied rare moments when he lightened up, and his brow furrowed when he turned up the wattage. Mostly, though, he played with serene grace. Christopher Warren-Green and his orchestra supported the soloist with a refined, tender sound that showcased him perfectly. (Ohlsson proved equally genial offstage, meeting with students from Northwest School of the Arts during the day.)
The concert started with a patchy rendition of the overture Beethoven wrote for a play, “The Ruins of Athens.” Warren-Green and his musicians erased memories of that flabby beginning with a Fifth Symphony that burst off the stage.
The conductor favors a lithe, muscular Beethoven and made that approach work through all four movements: the surging opening, the fast-flowing but unhurried andante, the striding third movement and the vigorous finale.
Some musicologists see this symphony as a struggle with fate, ending in a hard-won victory; a character in E.M. Forster’s “Howards End” hears mocking goblins walking through the world, until Beethoven blows them away with his mighty major-key ending.
In Warren-Green’s hands, the symphony becomes more of an affirmation from start to finish, the expression of a positive nature that encounters opposition but soon pushes past it. Along the way, the conductor took time to bring out details – a contemplative oboe solo, martial bursts from a flute – and the musicians consistently realized his vision.
Perhaps more music would have been out of place after this masterpiece. But I wish he’d treated us to the most memorable theme from “The Ruins of Athens,” its jaunty Turkish march. A woman behind me said, “I miss the days when he added encores.” So do I.
Charlotte Symphony Orchestra
WHEN: 3 p.m. Sunday.
WHERE: Belk Theater, 130 N. Tryon St.
TICKETS: $19-$173 (students $15 two hours before performance).
DETAILS: 704-972-2000 or charlottesymphony.org.
This story was originally published October 7, 2018 at 11:00 AM.