Any suspicions that the best-loved piano concerto in the repertoire might sound routine or stale were dispelled from the outset in this performance by Simon Trpčeski, by turns majestic, heaven-storming, intimate, dreamy and terpsichorean. The Macedonian pianist immediately warmed to the orchestra and audience, bringing an intensity of focus and purpose to his interpretation.
Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto has had a vivid afterlife as the concerto equivalent of Beethoven’s Fifth, a de facto ambassador for “classical music” — as the sizable audience filling Benaroya Hall seemed to indicate. I have no doubt that not a few were experiencing the piece live for the first time; their enthusiasm was infectious.
In the terrifying double-octave passages, Trpčeski thundered impressively without derailing into bombast. He maintained an admirable balance of power and clarity in the climaxes but also lavished caressing legato and dynamic differentiation on Tchaikovsky’s indelible melodies.
The variety of treble colors he mixed in his solos showed a subtle musical imagination that further benefited his rapport with the orchestra, as in the trade-off of pure, ravishing cantabile with Jeffrey Barker’s flute solo in the Andantino. Equally beguiling was the pianist’s rhythmic spring and dancelike agility, whether in folklike mode or in more sophisticated, balletic guise.
Also appearing as a Seattle Symphony guest — as is the case, by definition these days, for the figure on the podium — was Osmo Vänskä, who had concluded last season by leading the (expanded) orchestra in a finely detailed Mahler Second. He was an elegant partner for the Tchaikovsky, calibrating balances judiciously while also savoring the already delectable orchestration of the still-young composer.
Vänskä’s connection with the players sustained the epic sweep of Sergei Prokofiev’s Sixth Symphony, which filled the program’s second half, while also navigating its seeming contradictions and surprising turns. He drew on a deep sympathy for this often uneasy symphonic journey, more complexly layered than the spectacularly successful Fifth Symphony of 1945 — and, not long after its 1947 premiere, doomed to be condemned by the Soviet Congress of Composers, which censured Prokofiev for failing to uplift audiences with unambiguously triumphal strains.
The first movement’s swerve into a death march became even more terrifying than the parallel moments it echoes from Mahler, as Vänskä coaxed the full panoply of brass and percussion to go full throttle. But other passages had chamber-like clarity. The oboe’s desperate, desolate theme pierced the soundscape with a spectral presence in Mary Lynch VanderKolk’s characterful phrasing. The Sixth also came across as a concerto for orchestra, allowing myriad spots for artful display, from the halcyon quartet of horns led by Mark Robbins in the Largo to the high-energy clarinet solo (Ben Lulich) in the finale of this three-movement symphony. Vänskä guided everything with a dramatically cogent sense of pace and architecture.
To open the concert, the conductor showcased a shorter work by the South Korean composer Donghoon Shin (born in 1983). Vänskä, whose tenure as music director of the Seoul Philharmonic ended last year, has been a champion of the London-based composer. Premiered in 2019 by the Berlin Philharmonic’s Karajan Academy, Shin’s Of Rats and Men draws on a pair of characters from short stories by Franz Kafka and Roberto Bolaño. Each of its two movements foregrounds a woodwind player as the protagonist — oboe for the Kafka narrative, bassoon for the Bolaño (vividly characterized by Ben Hausmann and Luke Fieweger). While his musical dramaturgy did not always convince, Shin’s flair for orchestral color and unusually shaped melodies proved captivating.
