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Double Pleasure

Epic Brahms and Schumann at San Jose Symphony

By Philip Collins

Two musical works born of high inspiration and exalted craft made for a blockbuster program at the San Jose Symphony last weekend. Schumann's Symphony No. 3 (Rhenish) marks the composer's pinnacle of achievement in the symphonic medium, and Brahms' Concerto No. 2 in Bb for Piano and Orchestra--at just under 50 minutes--is certainly among the most ravishing and epic concertos the repertoire has to offer.

Guest pianist Gerhard Oppitz' renown is chiefly centered on his interpretations of Brahms, and his performance Friday proved as much. Oppitz captured this concerto's grandiosity while maintaining its intimate relations; there was purposefulness and expressive might informing his every move. Oppitz' unyielding grasp of the music's core energies ran through the performance like a fuse burning. Each entry merged into the musical thoroughfare as if from a running start, and his phrasing was keenly responsive to orchestral nuances.

The rapport between Oppitz and conductor Leonid Grin was close for the most part, and it improved during the course of the performance. Despite some rough-hewn edges during the first two movements, Grin's navigation of the concerto's complex tempo agenda kept momentum and musicality strong throughout. The score's lyric ties between piano and orchestra were poetically finessed in most cases--the latter movements especially so. Oppitz and Grin negotiated Brahms' exhaustive trade-offs with fluid reciprocation, each attentive to the other's interpretive leanings.

Oppitz' passion-driven account was always compelling. Although his smashing chordal episodes during the opening Allegro non troppo could have used some restraint, and fleeting blemishes cropped up early on in some of the passagework, he consistently mined the work's expressive essence and gave wing to its myriad virtuosities. Even amid the most daunting onslaughts of technical minutiae, his focus held true to the music's emotional throughline.

The second movement (Allegro appassionato), with its labyrinth of countenances and melodic variants was more striking on a moment-to-moment basis than overall. This movement's mysterious plays of tumultuousness and longing should ultimately coalesce, but Friday's performance was more segmented than joined. Oppitz emphasized contrasts through his dynamics, as Grin did through pronounced tempo changes (particularly when downshifting into the largamente section), and the movement's unifying lyric thread was not always discernible as a result.

The Andante's welcome tranquillity was ushered in handsomely by principal cellist Peter Gelfand. With warmth and stately calm, the theme seemed to lay out the foundation for all that was to follow in the movement. The music's slow rise out of dreaminess featured finely blended ensemble work by the strings, and the build into the piano's impassioned trill motif was paced terrifically. Clarinetists Michael Corner and Robert Weil offered a memorable reading in their quiet duet with the piano near the movement's end, just prior to the cello's final say.

For the finale, Oppitz revealed a nimble touch to suit the opening motif's lightness. Through the movement's diversely challenging episodes, he mustered varietal shadings of technical wizardry--enough to give the final cadence a thrilling lift.

Schumann's Symphony No. 3 kicked the evening off in a joyous stampede. The music burst forth with the unbridled exuberance of a mountain stream in springtime, cutting its own bold course in directions refreshingly original to the symphonic form. Grin elicited wonderful work from the orchestra. The horns, more in the limelight than usual, came through heroically, soaring high and en masse above the fray, pronouncing a degree of optimism rarely evinced in Schumann's music.

The gently flowing second movement must be one of the most benign, unhurried scherzos in the symphonic literature. Its natural emergence out of the first movement's ecstatic romp welcomes the listener like an old friend, with a broadly smiling theme that shared the cellos and horns (perhaps something Prokofiev listened to before composing Peter and the Wolf?).

A trip down the Rhine river in 1850 with his wife, Clara, provided the ostensible inspiration for this work, although it was Schumann's unexpected appointment as music director in Düsseldorf that likely lifted his spirits so high. Such acknowledgment was long overdue for the composer; it was, however, tragically short-lived due to his deteriorating mental state. By 1856 he died, at the age of 46.

The Rhenish is a marvelous testament by which to remember Schumann; it is but a hint of what he may have gone on to compose had life not been so short.

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