Music review

Pianist aces concerto in ASO opener

In January 2010, the last time the the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra programmed Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto in a minor, pianist Valentina Lisitsa gave Robinson Center Music Hall's poor 9-foot grand such a pounding that it's a surprise it survived.

Pianist Jon Kimura Parker was no less magnificent or powerful playing the piece with the orchestra and conductor Philip Mann on Saturday night at the Maumelle Performing Arts Center, but his approach was considerably more nuanced and balanced -- plenty of bravura without bombast, working with the instrument instead of assaulting it, just as pyrotechnical as the piece requires, but resulting in less shrapnel and rubble. The performance struck, as Parker noted in a pre-concert interview, "just the right balance between lyrical melodic beauty and big, exciting octave passages and crashing cadenzas."

Parker's touch was forceful but considerate, making the music and not showmanship his priority. The orchestra responded superbly in kind. Parker, preparing to play the encore the enthusiastic ovation earned (Oscar Peterson's whiz-bang "Blues Etude"), had enthusiastic praise for his onstage partners.

It was a tall order programming a second half of a concert -- the ASO's 2015-16 season opener -- that wouldn't be an anticlimax, but Mann managed it: an excellent performance of the Symphony No. 2 by Alexander Borodin, full of Russian and Central Asian folk melodies (including a lovely third-movement bit with choice solo bits for the harp and principal woodwinds) and rhythms. The collection of dance themes that the composer cobbled into his finale sent the audience traipsing into the night fantastic.

The orchestra also aced the curtain-raiser, the concert overture that Felix Mendelssohn alternately called Fingal's Cave and The Hebrides.

Parker, Mann and the orchestra will repeat it at 3 p.m. today at the Performing Arts Center, Maumelle High School, 100 Victory Lane, Maumelle. Parker will also play a Beethoven chamber piece with four ASO wind principals at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Great Hall at the Clinton Presidential Center, 1200 President Clinton Ave., Little Rock.

Ticket information is available by calling (501) 666-1761, Extension 100, or online at ArkansasSymphony.org.

Metro on 09/27/2015

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