Emanuel Ax Plays Lush Beethoven
THE CHARLESTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA’s 76th year of Masterworks concerts opened Saturday, November 12, with two Romantic era works.
Shuffling onto the stage of Gaillard Municipal Auditorium, Emanuel Ax, one of the world’s foremost keyboard giants, performed flawlessly Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-Flat Major, Op. 73,” better known as the “Emperor,” bursting forth with the poetry and drama in this magnificent work.
Ax, who has aged since last in Charleston for the opening years of Spoleto Festival USA’s Chamber Music Series in the late 1970s, has lost none of his unique talent and has matured with a deepened understanding of the music he is playing.
Ax’s employment of legato is second to none and never more evident in this last of Beethoven’s piano concertos. His ability to smoothly deliver the music captured the imagination of the audience, numbering over 2,000.
Conductor Stuart Malina, familiar to Charleston audiences, provided a remarkably coherent accompaniment with the newly re-constituted Charleston Symphony. The orchestra, none the worse for wear after last year’s near debacle, played in a committed fashion and sounded more together than they have sounded in years.
Beethoven’s concerto tests the mettle of each pianist who tackles it. Ax and Malina had close agreement on how it should flow, with majestic waves of Beethoven’s grand melodic structures.
Pianist Emanuel Ax
The audience was a little slow with its standing ovation, perhaps because they were still mesmerized by the extraordinary playing of Ax. Repeated curtain calls had Ax returning to the stage where he provided a Chopin waltz as an encore.
Malina and the orchestra opened the concert with Antonin Dvořák’s “Symphony No. 8 in G Major, Op. 88.” Unfortunately, Malina’s concept was to downplay the excitement in the music, stressing the broad melodic content at the expense of its highly emotional and turbulent episodes. The resulting performance needed a good shot of adrenalin.
Beautiful as this symphony is, it needs more than wallowing in sweetness without any emotional arousal. Fortunately, the orchestra played splendidly.
Overall, this concert was a promising re-start for the orchestra.
