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Berlioz, Strauss, Liszt, and Hanson: Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz, conductor, Barry Douglas, piano, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 5.2.2009 (BJ)


Barry Douglas is a pianist in the grand tradition, commanding in technique, and unusual in the breadth of his stylistic sympathies. Conducting his own performances and recordings of Beethoven and Mozart, he has shown his affinity, on podium and piano-bench alike, with the Viennese classics. But it was the Romantic virtuoso side of the pianist that was on display in the Seattle Symphony’s attractive coupling of Strauss’ Burleske and Liszt’s First Piano Concerto. 

The technique was as commanding as ever, manifested in crystal-clear articulation, ringingly resonant tone at the top of the keyboard, and bass sonorities of massive solidity. (I thought the piano itself might have lacked a touch of tonal bloom in a few middle-register notes.) Phrasing was expansive and intimate by turns, responding as well to both the irony and the self-communing of the Strauss work as to Liszt’s more straightforward emotional afflatus.

Gerard Schwarz’s sympathetic shaping of the orchestral part in both pieces was enhanced by some richly resonant string playing and by fine work also from the other sections. Michael Crusoe found all kinds of subtleties in the important timpani part of the Strauss, and in the Liszt there were voluptuous solo and ensemble contributions from all the woodwinds, while associate principal Mark Robbins offered graceful horn solos.

The curtain-raiser, Berlioz’s wittily sparkling Beatrice and Benedict overture, elicited richer sonorities than I have previously heard in it, especially from the horn section. And the evening closed with Howard Hanson’s First Symphony, the Nordic, done to a turn with all stops pulled and no holds barred. The work’s three movements abound in luxuriant invention and sumptuous sonorities, and there is some truly noble writing in the finale. The music’s chief lack is of any deference to the law of diminishing returns: far too many passages are dominated by piccolo and cymbals. Splendidly as these instruments were played by Zart Dombourian-Eby and Ronald Johnson, the effect inevitably resembles that of a dish with so much pepper that you can’t taste anything else.

Bernard Jacobson

This review appeared also in the Seattle Times.

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