Performances continue through Sunday at Van Wezel
A highly-appreciative audience at the Neel Performing Arts Center Friday evening was treated to a concert which, on the one hand, demonstrated the consistent development of the Sarasota Orchestra under the guidance of Music Director Anu Tali and, on the other, typified the programming challenges which these new standards present to both the musicians and the audience, challenges which are not risk-free.
The concert began with a powerful performance of Johannes Brahms’s massive Piano Concerto No 1 in D Minor, with Roman Rabinovich as soloist, a last-minute replacement for Lukas Vondracek, who withdrew due to illness.
This concerto is well known for having escaped both the composer’s compulsive doubts about its quality and the audience catcalls heard at an early performance in Leipzig. Hearing it today, especially in a version so permeated with energy and skill as heard on this occasion, it is difficult — if not impossible — to comprehend the composers hesitancy, which may have been motivated in part by the recent suicide attempt of his friend Robert Schumann.
All the many themes which occur in this lengthy and demanding concerto have their origins in events in the composer’s tumultuous life and are of such weight as to have prompted critics to call it a “symphony with piano accompaniment,” a characterization powerfully contradicted by the way in which the skilled and adventurous Rabinovich and Tali’s fine orchestra conquered its challenges.
This concerto is both demanding and rewarding, a quality that stimulated the Neel audience to lengthy and well–deserved cheers for both the soloist and the orchestra at its conclusion.
The second half of the concert consisted of a hearty presentation of the Symphony No. 1 in E Minor by Jean Sibelius, written during 1898-1899. This sprawling composition is a compelling example of the impressive (and sometimes oppressive) manner in which the composer chose to portray the wintry emotional landscape of his native Finland.
The symphony is both puzzling and challenging, leaving the listener with a massive crescendo followed by a nearly inaudible whisper, characteristics which were well conveyed by Tali and her fine orchestra. A performance of such secure expertise bodes well for both performers and audience now and in the future.