Classical music needs its glittering bodies as badly as any other branch of the performing arts, even if it has fewer such gods to send onstage than it once did. Thank goodness, then, for the likes of Evgeny Kissin, the Russian firebrand-poet who, along with the comparably gifted Lang Lang, seems to be upholding the piano celebrity cult almost single-handedly these days.
Kissin, almost as boyish-looking as when he made his Chicago debut nearly 18 years ago, returned to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on Thursday night at Orchestra Hall, bringing with him one of the supreme knuckle-busters in the Romantic repertory, Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1. True to expectation, the pianist conquered, and the sold-out house was all but delirious with pleasure.
Kissin, at 36, appears to have toned down many of the interpretive mannerisms from the Russian Romantic school that once marred his readings of non-Russian repertory. His Brahms was in fact a thrilling experience: massive and sinewy, yet full of burnished warmth and played with immense technical authority.
There was something almost superhuman in the nonchalant command with which he tore through the torrential volleys of chords and furious passage work of the outer movements. With conductor Charles Dutoit as sympathetic intermediary, the dialogue between the piano and various solo instruments felt spontaneous. And the majestic cantilena of the Adagio never dragged.
As if climbing one of the piano’s Mt. Everests actually refreshed him, a smiling Kissin hugged Dutoit, applauded the orchestra and rewarded the standing, cheering throng with two encores: Chopin’s Scherzo in B-flat Minor (sensationally played) and Brahms’ Waltz in A-flat (complete with a memory slip neatly finessed).
Dutoit, launching a two-week guest engagement, began with a gleaming performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Russian Easter Overture” that showed off the CSO’s corporate strengths very well, not least a darkly intoned trombone chorale.
Stravinsky’s Symphony in C is the master’s Chicago symphony, written for the CSO’s 50th anniversary and premiered by the orchestra in 1940, with Stravinsky conducting.
Those shifting meters, eccentric rhythms and offbeat running figures can be the very devil to get right, but Dutoit had everything in proper balance. The orchestra responded elegantly, its woodwinds as poised and lucid as dancers in one of George Balanchine’s Stravinsky ballets.
The program will be repeated at 8 p.m. Saturday; phone 312-294-3000.
———-
jvonrhein@tribune.com
