A superstar pianist performing over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend – surely the repertoire selected would be standard, mainstream stuff? Not so for Yuja Wang who offered not one but two daunting piano concertos with The Cleveland Orchestra in about the most demanding selection one will hear from a concerto soloist. At the podium was guest conductor Petr Popelka in his first regular subscription appearance, following his memorable debut on the orchestra’s summer series.
The program began and ended with an ebullient acknowledgement of Maurice Ravel’s 150th anniversary year, opening with the Piano Concerto in D major for the left hand. The lowest members of the woodwinds and brass made for an understated introduction before the orchestra crested to herald the thunderous piano entrance, beginning with an extensive cadenza — and it was hard to believe this hall-filling sound came from one hand alone. This wasn’t all bombast as Wang drew out the range of the composer’s impressionist color palette, supported and augmented by the glittering orchestration.
The work’s latter section was marked by a frenetically descending march, given with captivating swagger. A sweeping flourish was particularly striking with its muscular playing from the orchestra, anchored by a robust percussion section (including a snare that brought to mind Boléro). One more cadenza put Wang’s enormous dexterity on full display, drawing the work to a rapturous close.
All this was merely warm-up for the fiendishly complex Piano Concerto of György Ligeti. Completed in the late 1980s, it was written alongside the composer’s watershed études for solo piano and bears many parallels. The brightness of the opening was amplified by its rhythmic intricacies with constantly shifting accents, driving pulse and striking timbres. Multiple threads in varying meters unfolded simultaneously, and TCO played with their trademark precision.
An impossibly long note for double bass opened the slow movement, and here the textures were fragmented and desolate, further expressed by unusual instrumentation (including ocarina, flexatone and harmonica) and the piano at both extremes of the keyboard. The central Vivace cantabile makes for the concerto’s Scherzo, marked by hypnotic repetitions. The following segment explored pointillist textures, with each element clicking into place like a Swiss watch. Marked Presto luminoso, Wang had a featherlight touch in the finale as the final moments of this remarkable yet enigmatic work fluttered by.
After two concertos, two encores were in order from the indefatigable pianist. A limpid account of one of the Mendelssohn Songs without words (Op.67 no.2) intoxicated with its alluring melody, countered by a riveting take on the bristling Allegro molto from Shostakovich’s Eight String Quartet, in a transcription by Boris Giltburg.
Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition rounded out the program, given in its familiar orchestration by Ravel. One of the greatest of orchestral showpieces, Popelka managed a performance that avoided the routine, vividly bringing the titular pictures to life. The clarion trumpet from Michael Sachs that began the opening Promenade made for arresting beginnings, building to a rich chorale. This chameleonic theme was artfully transformed in each reappearance, serving as anchoring signposts along the way.
Popelka drew out Ravel’s imaginative orchestration – the striking saxophone of Il vecchio castello, the muted trumpet of Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle — while emphasizing contrast, as when the levity of Tuileries yielded to the gritty weight of Bydło. This wasn’t just a collection of vignettes, but the conductor shaped the suite with unified direction, culminating in the blazing brass and bells of The Great Gate of Kiev.
