He did enter this frothy soundworld with glittering restraint. Gerstein is a merry bear at the keyboard, tearing into juicy repertoire and relishing virtuosic challenges. This supercold and analytical execution seemed secure in every note and blessedly clean.īeginning with the opener, Debussy’s En blanc et noir (1931), we experienced a bit of cognitive dissonance between the primo of Adès and the secondo of Gerstein (we know those terms are inapt).
It comes across as a classroom exercise by a clever pianist-teacher giving a learned gloss to his keyboard partner. Shostakovich’s take brings the counterpoint into clear focus without pretending to evoke continuous tones. The neoclassical exercise for orchestra without upper strings depends on gorgeous wind sonorities to dress up its sharply etched structures. Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, one of Koussy’s most beloved commissions for the BSO, made its appearance in a two-piano transcription Shostakovich undertook in the late ’30s, for performance with his son, we understand. In his opera transcription in particular, we imagined his 10 fingers as a gabby coterie of independent voices, although without human voices and instrumental colors, the very technical writing left any lyrical stage imagery taking a powder. As a pianist, he composes some intensely interesting sounds. Throughout the evening Adès played with technique and imagination both approaching the incredible, goading his partner Gerstein and keeping the audience in lively accord. The well-curated program (presumably Adès’s doing) detoured from a stimulating span (1901-1941) of French and Russian modernists to showcase his own two-piano Lisztian concert paraphrase of his opera Powder Her Face. Wednesday night at Ozawa Hall witnessed his partnership at two pianos with 2018 Koussevitzky Artist Kirill Gerstein. In his second of three seasons as BSO Artistic Partner, Thomas Adès has been collaborator-in-chief, bringing his superior skills as pianist, conductor, curator, and educator to Tanglewood ubiquity.
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