ASO, WILSON GENERATE SPARKS WITH CONCERTO
Michael Huebner, mhuebner@bhamnews.com
The Birmingham News – al.com
Saturday, October 04, 2008
AL
After wowing a Birmingham audience in 2004, the brilliant, kinetic
pianist Terrence Wilson returned to an Alabama Symphony MasterWorks
program to do it again. Then it was Ravel.
This time it was Aram Khachaturian, of "Sabre Dance" fame. But that
famous tune couldn’t hold a candle to the electricity Wilson brought
to the Piano Concerto Friday at the Alys Stephens Center.
This is a complex score, embellished with Armenian folk tunes and
never more than a stone’s throw from Prokofiev (the composer’s mentor)
and Tchaikovsky. Wilson played it like he has lived with it all his
life. Muscular and focused, he could overwhelm one minute, and charm
with infectious passion the next. As the broad lyricism of the Andante
movement unfolded and the volume swelled, Wilson’s face beamed with
delight. He reined in the boisterous, all-over-the-keyboard finale
with commanding control.
Conductor Christopher Confessore and the ASO let Wilson take charge,
at times slightly behind the beat, but never out of reach.
The concert began with a tepid, slightly ragged, reading of
Shostakovich’s "Tahiti-Trot," a takeoff on the Broadway tune, "Tea
for Two." One of the composer’s most humorous pieces (yes, he wrote
several despite his struggles with Soviet censors), it begs for
exaggerated and schmaltzy playing but stayed in a safe middle ground.
Stellar `Sheherazade’:
Not so with the closer, Rimsky-Korsakov’s "Sheherazade." Little
interpretation is needed with this familiar work, so Confessore
allowed the orchestra’s solo players their freedom.
They were masterful. Concertmaster Daniel Szasz set the pace, his
opening solo unfurling with slow deliberation. Cellist Warren Samples
took the cue, and handed it off to the principal woodwinds and horn,
each playing with fluidity, precision and warmth.
The wall of sound that engulfed Jemison Concert Hall in the opening
movement subsided to gentle duets between Szasz and harpist Judith
Sullivan Hicks, only to morph to sweeping grandeur in the final
movement.