Dazzlingly dexterous Ravel from Aimard and Vӓnskӓ in Philadelphia

The music of Michael Tilson Thomas opened the most recent Philadelphia Orchestra subscription concert, but the man himself was not to be found in Marian Anderson Hall. The 80-year-old conductor-composer has kept a remarkably full calendar despite receiving treatment for brain cancer over the past four years. Two weeks ago, Tilson Thomas announced a recurrence of the disease and set his final concerts for next month, while withdrawing from several other planned engagements. Osmo Vӓnskӓ gamely stepped in to replace him on short notice, and he kept the program intact, including Tilson Thomas’s 1998 Agnegram. It proved a fitting tribute and a strong reminder that MTT’s gifts lie beyond just the podium.

Tilson Thomas conceived the robust and energetic Agnegram as a ninetieth-birthday present for Agnes Albert, a longtime supporter of the San Francisco Symphony, where he served as music director for 25 years. I never met Mrs Albert, but I have the measure of MTT, and he seems to have crammed all of his prodigious and varied musical interests into this seven-minute miniature concerto for orchestra. The writing includes Ivesian quotations of popular music, glorious fanfares, references to the Great American Songbook and Broadway melodies – all while embedding the name “Agnes” in the music. (The German notation system helps here.) Vӓnskӓ unleashed a musical torrent of snappy percussion, jazz-inflected brass and colorful woodwind playing. Violist Choong-Jin Chang memorably dispatched a hazy violin solo that lingered above the fray, despite the bombastic competition surrounding it. Let’s hope that Tilson Thomas’s music remains in the Philadelphia repertoire for years to come.

Maurice Ravel composed his Piano Concerto in D major for the Left Hand for Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm in World War I. The work itself also feels influenced by conflict – both the personal struggle of adapting to disability and the global impact of combat warfare – with disquieted, militaristic writing for lower string and woodwind instruments, and a constant sense of battle as one hand attempts to do the work of two. Pierre-Laurent Aimard allowed his left hand to sail across the keyboard with dazzling dexterity, balancing muscularity in the cadenza with a delicate dreaminess elsewhere. He brought a lyrical gravity to lower passages and a traditional Ravelian shimmer to higher-lying clusters. Shepherded by Vӓnskӓ, Aimard engaged in great dialogues with individual orchestral players, including Ricardo Morales (clarinet), Elizabeth Starr Masoudnia (English horn), Daniel Matsukawa (bassoon) and Elizabeth Hainen (harp).

Next to the buoyant first half of the concert, the main course of Beethoven’s Symphony no. 3 in E flat major seemed slightly out of place. The Philadelphians know this music inside and out, and they offered a textbook reading of the score. Yet despite some intriguing interventions on Vӓnskӓ’s part, like launching attacca into the final movement, it often felt like they were traversing well-trod ground. The exception was the expertly shaped Marcia funebre, which neatly balanced the movement’s somber and celebratory moods.