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Grieg and Bruckner: Gerard Schwarz, conductor, André Watts piano, Seattle Symphony, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 27.3.2009 (BJ)


Two years ago, André Watts collaborated with Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony in a stunningly original and illuminating performance of Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto. Back now for Grieg’s Piano Concerto, he played beautifully, as he usually does, and if the result was less revelatory, it was simply because there is less in the Grieg concerto to be revelatory about. Play beautifully, with the backing of a good conductor and an orchestra in excellent shape, and you have a success on (or under) your hands. This was certainly a success, and the audience rewarded it with a vociferous ovation.

More stimulating to my ears was what came after intermission. Bruckner’s Third Symphony is played relatively seldom, but it is a fine work, especially in the version the composer made of it in 1877, before Franz Schalk inflicted his editorial depredations on the text. Schwarz gave us the 1877 score, and it emerged bright and shining, even–uncharacteristically for Bruckner–sounding quite short in parts.

“Shining” is a word that applies particularly to one moment in the piece. About a quarter of the way into the first movement, the four horns have a soft, sustained chord that is positively lambent in its calm beauty. John Cerminaro and his section–quite possibly the best horn section anywhere in America–were perfectly in tune for this and many passages in the generally horn-dominated, another being the peaceful closing pages of the slow movement. Nor were they alone in their achievement. Lined up again against the back wall of the platform but now on a less excessively high riser, the trumpets and trombones (the latter well led on this occasion by second trombone David Ritt, principal Ko-ichiro Yamamoto being released in preparation for a concerto premiere next week) blended finely into the orchestral whole. The woodwinds, highlighted by some poignant solos from principal oboe Ben Hausmann and the jeweled tones of Scott Goff and his flute section, helped to make the slow movement particularly compelling. And the strings were eloquent, the violins in particular scaling the upper reaches of Bruckner’s writing with attractively silvery tone. Michael Crusoe, too, was as crisp yet discreet as ever with his timpani.

Directed with a just combination of spontaneity and control by Maestro Schwarz, this was an altogether persuasive performance, sufficing to suggest that No. 3 might with advantage be programmed occasionally instead of some of the composer’s more familiar symphonies. That Andante is an especially delectable movement; the scherzo charms with tunes that at times evoke a sort of updated Schubert; and the finale, with a second theme-group daringly superimposing a polka in the strings over a chorale in the brass, is as individual a movement as Bruckner ever wrote–and unusually punctual in its crowning peroration.

Bernard Jacobson

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