OSM review: Virtuoso duet from Denis Matsuev, Mikhail Pletnev

MONTREAL - My Moscow relatives were jealous when I told them I would hear Denis Matsuev play Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto at the Maison symphonique Thursday, and these are not easy people to impress. I had one cousin train an elephant to walk a tightrope between two balconies at a party — a three-ton beast, bejazzled in every way, who loped across with a triumphant teenager on top — and nobody noticed.

Turns out they were right to be jealous, but first there was the matter of The Seasons, the ballet by Glazunov — the same Glazunov who allegedly ruined the première of Rachmaninoff’s first symphony by conducting it drunk. Not a Russian tradition, in this case — it’s just what I think of whenever these two share a concert program.

Glazunov was a wunderkind, like Rachmaninoff, but from St. Petersburg instead of Moscow. He even managed to ride out the revolution, which comes to mind because there is something shrewd about his music, even with Mikhail Pletnev leading the OSM. It was a vivid performance and its more brilliant parts, like the Autumn Bacchanal, made me glad there weren’t dancers trying to keep up with Pletnev. He conducts like a man launching a yacht in a tuxedo, careful-don’t-get-mud-on-it movements bursting into Christ-I’ll-do-it-myself. But most of the suite just ran prettily past. No matter how finely the material is worked, it’s still not gold.

Expectations were high when Matsuev arrived. At 38, he looks like a big, rosy-cheeked Siberian boy, but he moves like a gallant; he could have entered in a litter. Pletnev and he passed for two men ignoring each other while performing a virtuoso duet; the opening theme’s octaves glided into the orchestral line as if they were played by one hand, and the first cadenza (the piano solo) was volcanic, a freakish release that cast Matsuev’s elegant composure into self-conscious relief. The finale was sublime, but the best was their wondrous Intermezzo, as balanced as a watch spring and as full of discoveries as the ocean in the dead of night.

This much beauty was almost a knockout after Glazunov’s pretty slapping, but it wasn’t enough to prevent the massive audience from giving the champion six trips to the door before he realized an encore was necessary. So he played two.

Lev Bratishenko

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