The Concert Association of Florida's season is morphing into a kind of musical version of ''Can you top this?'' Just when you think you have heard an unbeatable pianist or Russian orchestra the next event serves up something even more spectacular.
On Monday, the State Symphony Orchestra of Russia kicked off its 11-city U.S. tour with an impressive stand at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts sparked by an electrifying star turn by pianist Denis Matsuev.
Led by artistic director and chief conductor Mark Gorenstein, the orchestra revealed itself as outstanding, even among the plethora of excellent Russian ensembles. The symphony possesses a dark, deep-pile sonority with balances dominated by its ample strings. Woodwinds are superb but less tangible, and brass could have been more robust, though the lack of presence may have been partly due to the orchestra's performing without risers.
Three excerpts from Tchaikovsky's The Snow Maiden served notice of the State Symphony's corporate versatility. Gorenstein drew rapt string playing in the central Melodrama, and the Dance of the Buffoons exploded with brilliance and sonic force.
If the orchestra's bravura made the Knight Concert Hall audience sit up, Matsuev's full-metal assault on Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3 proved jaw dropping.
First-prize winner of the 1998 Tchaikovsky Competition, the six-foot four-inch Siberian brought massive strength and seemingly effortless power to Prokofiev's spiky warhorse. Yet he also brought a nuanced, neo-Classical poise to the central movement's more reflective variations.
It was Matsuev's blazing virtuosity, however, that built the performance up to a fever pitch. Matsuev threw off the finale's gliassandi, octaves and assorted landmines with flawless technique and staggering force, the race to the aggressive, hammering coda providing one of the most thrilling edge-of-the-seat adrenaline rides of the season. Matsuev indulged the vociferous ovations with an equally bravura encore of Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King.
Gorenstein had a tough act to follow but managed to maintain the audience buzz with a distinct, largely rewarding take on Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 2.
The State Symphony showed it can deliver a rich, sonorous string tone in the Snow Maiden excerpts, but Gorenstein's approach on Rachmaninoff's über-Romantic symphony took a lean, revisionist form.
Gorenstein paced the music skillfully, with great impact to climaxes and no want of Romantic urgency. Yet, he also drew string playing of surprising transparency, sheering off some of the schmaltz and making the music sound remarkably fresh. The performance was finest in the Adagio, when Gorenstein laid down his baton and guided the long, long lines expansively with his hands, yielding elegant string playing and subtle, dynamic shading rarely heard in this music.
Lawrence A. Johnson is The Miami Herald's classical music critic.
