Gerstein creates magic, Oregon Symphony strides ahead with León and Prokofiev

A very large audience at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall greeted the Oregon Symphony for Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No 2 with Kirill Gerstein headlining the evening (December 3). It was great to see a fairly stuffed auditorium for a program that included the West-coast premiere of Tania León’s Pulitzer-prize-winning “Stride” and a vivid performance of Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 7.

The concertgoers ate up Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto from the get-go to the grand finale. Gerstein’s pianism wonderfully evoked the expansive, Romantic themes without becoming sappy and overly sentimental. Gerstein elicited the dreamy melodic lines of the second movement exquisitely, and put an extra sheen on the third, delivering the ending passages with a majestic, sonic sweep.

Music director David Danzmayr let the orchestra get too loud a couple of times in the first movement, which covered up Gerstein’s sound even though he was pounding out double-fortes. But that is just a quibble in light of the orchestra’s outstanding accompaniment. Highlights included the smooth and plaintive clarinet (James Shields) and flute (Alicia DiDonato Paulsen) in the second movement as well as a pillow-soft entry by Paulsen and flutist Zachariah Galatis just a little later

Listeners responded to the concerto with thunderous applause, and Gerstein graciously replied with a lovely encore, an arrangement that Rachmaninoff had made of Fritz Kreisler’s “Liebeslied.”

Co-commissioned by the Oregon Symphony, León wrote “Stride” to celebrate the 19th Amendment, which secured women’s right to vote. León’s one-movement work offered a lot of sonic variety, opening with strings playing very high notes and a gurgling sound from the trumpets. The music acquired a random-like quality with woodwinds piping up now and then against sporadic lunges from the strings. Rhythmically herky-jerky at times, the piece staggered forward, and at one point, it seemed that the cellos provided some glue with suspended tones. A rumble of percussion, including tubular bells rang out to bring the piece to a close.

Although I didn’t hear a melodic line that I could hang my hat on, “Stride” expressed an openness and a rhythmic sophistication that made me want to hear it again. Since the Oregon Symphony was instrumental in bringing the piece about in the first place, it might reappear in a future program.

Prokofiev’s Seventh Symphony received an outstanding performance by the orchestra. I loved how the mood switched from an initial foreboding statement to a lighter, more cheerful one with the glockenspiel creating a twinkly effect, and then between those two was a wide and warm passage that could have swept everything aside, but didn’t. The whole piece had a chameleon-like flavor – changing from light an airy to a more serious and somber sound with an underlayment, at times, of sarcasm. Even the ending had that curious mixture of fairy dust with a weightier, more sober essence.

The performance was the first time that the Oregon Symphony had ever performed the Seventh. I hope that we don’t have to wait a long, long time to hear it again.