Garrick Ohlsson -- Chopin's birthday gift to San Francisco and vice versa

By Eman Isadiar

SAN FRANCISCO – Michael Tilson Thomas conducted the San Francisco Symphony last weekend inChopin's Piano Concerto No. 2 with pianist Garrick Ohlsson as part of a flurry of concerts held this year throughout the world to commemorate the composer's bicentennial birthday. The program also included the second movement of Litolff's Concerto symphonique No. 4 with Ohlsson as soloist, the orchestral suite from the ballet Giselle by Adam and Debussy's La mer.

Bay Area pianist and first American to win the Chopin competition Garrick Ohlsson Courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

The evening opened with the only movement of a single work by Henry Charles Litolff which seems to have endured as a concert piece – the Scherzo from his Concerto symphonique No. 4. in D minor. Without this movement, the world may well have forgotten the Franco-Scottish composer and virtuoso pianist to whom Liszt dedicated his own first piano concerto.

Bay Area pianist Garrick Ohlsson was the soloist.

As the title suggests, the Concerto symphonique elevates the orchestra's size and role as compared to a typical piano concerto. It is a charming work vaguely reminiscent of the music of Mendelssohn in its elf-like motifs. With the exception of a brief transitional section, the piano weaves in and out of the orchestra – non-stop from start to finish – with a repetitive theme featuring quiet, rapidly descending staccato mordents requiring great skill and control.

Then followed an unforgettable rendition of Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, again with soloist Garrick Ohlsson, who also happens to be the first American ever to win the International Chopin Piano Competition 40 years ago.

Similar to Beethoven's second concerto, the work predates the composer's first concerto, but was published later and numbered counter to its chronology.

Chopin's unique brand of romantic classicism permeates this piece, with a fast and heroic first movement written in sonata allegro form, a slow, poetic and utterly enchanting second movement, and a fast folk dance-inspired third movement in rondo form.

Since the beginning of this historic anniversary year, audiences everywhere have been treated to the music of Chopin in concert halls big and small. Now that Garrick Ohlsson and Michael Tilson Thomas have shared the stage to honor the composer, the world can rest assured that Chopin's 200th birthday has indeed been celebrated.

Next on the program was music from the ballet Giselle by Chopin's Parisian contemporary Adolphe Adam. The work highlighted San Francisco Symphony's special flair for lavishly orchestrated and technically demanding romantic music. Apart from the conductor, the piece kept two orchestra members particularly busy – principal viola Jonathan Vinocour whose stunning solo passages pierced through the thick orchestration, and principal percussion Jack Van Geem whose precise striking of the triangle was simply brilliant as he switched back and forth among many other instruments.

The evening concluded with Debussy's three-movement symphonic work, or "three symphonic sketches" better known as La mer. Conducting from memory, Michael Tilson Thomas brought to focus the pronounced dynamics of the piece with wave after wave of symphonic sound gushing in a formidable musical deluge flowing from the tip of his baton.

Exaggerated climaxes such as we find in La mer are rare in the music of Debussy.

Paris, France figures prominently in the life of each and every composer whose work was included in the program.

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Eman Isadiar is a San Francisco-based pianist and music writer.