A relaxed understanding born of a long career helped pianist Garrick Ohlsson bring easy grace and Proto-Romantic sensibility to Beethoven’s Second and Fourth Piano Concertos with the Cleveland Orchestra.
The Cleveland Orchestra performed Beethoven’s Second and Fourth Piano Concertos on Saturday at Severance Music Center. The program will be repeated Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.CLEVELAND, Ohio — A relaxed understanding born of a long career helped pianist Garrick Ohlsson bring easy graceCleveland OrchestraThe program on Saturday at Severance Music Center featured early and middle works, the second set of concerts in the Orchestra’s cycle of Beethoven piano concertos.
Conductor Daniel Reith guided the orchestra with steadiness and buoyancy. In the second movement, strings and winds combined for astonishing elegiac moments, and in the finale, Ohlsson led the band in a rollicking rondo, revealing every syncopation and surprise. It was enough to prompt immediate and heartfelt applause.
The Fourth begins with G major chords from the soloist — a startling gesture, as pre-concert lecturer David Rothenberg reminded us — to which the Orchestra responds a major third away in B major, a move every bit as bold. Eschewing flamboyance, Ohlsson focused on nuanced shaping of each phrase, sometimes leaning into powerful, muscular chords which gave way to pearly trills and elegant arpeggios.
The lively finale featured playing as daring as it was joyous. Ohlsson and the Orchestra infused this concerto — one of the Cleveland cycle’s more audacious — with a freshness that made the experience feel new. Exemplary audience behavior was rewarded with another Beethoven gem: the well-loved second movement of the “Pathétique” Sonata, op. 15.
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