Friday, February 20, 2015

Garrick Ohlsson and Rachmaninov

Last night Sandra and I went to the Eugene Symphony. The main work on the program was Rachmaninov's 3rd piano concerto (my favorite of the piano concerto repertoire) performed by Garrick Ohlsson, one of my favorite pianists.

My benchmark favorite performance has been Martha Argerich, with Riccardo Chailly conducting, readily available both on YouTube and CD.


The recording from which I "learned" the work is a bit obscure, but still a favorite of mine.


Somehow a British pianist and a bunch of Scottish musicians do a wonderful job with this epitome of Slavic pathos.

Unfortunately Eugene doesn't have a particularly compelling conductor in Danail Rachev. The orchestra itself is very good, as a couple of guest conductors have demonstrated. But Rachev seeks to play everything as loud as possible, jinning up the crescendos and snoozing through most everything else. This was particularly disastrous in Sibelius' 7th symphony, which was played before the intermission. Any sense of the work's structural integrity was chopped to bits. In the Rachmaninov, Ohlsson took a (relative to the work's baseline temperament) a more introspective approach to Argerich's above. Which led him to often being overpowered by the over-loud orchestra.

Below is a snippet from a performance where he and the conductor seemed to be more on the same page.


We also noted that he was a very gracious and friendly person. His visage beamed genuine gratitude for the enthusiastic reception from the audience.  The following clip will give a sense of his persona.


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