Pianist Belatedly Awakes

TV show "Great Performances" was misnamed. It should have been called "Occasionally Great Performances".

While it always has gifted artists like Yo-Yo Ma and Yitzhak Perlman on, the performers usually give perfunctory renditions of their chosen repertory. Yet this isn't a matter of inadequate rehearsal. Nor is it typically a function of the performer being tempermentally unsuited to the music. No, most often what prevents leading classical musicians from greatness is that outstanding performances demand thought far more than time. Plainly, spending a life out on the road playing the same popular pieces over and over is deadening. The Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto #1 has likely ruined more artists than Carpal Tunnel. There are many "name" musicians-Andre Watts is one-notorious for playing all the notes, but not caring any longer about what they mean. Yet the difference between knowing and not knowing is, as Mark Twain once said in another context, between lightning and a lightning bug.

A recent performance amply demonstrated both sides of this.

Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes showed up at Carnegie Hall last week with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra. Andsnes may be the most critically praised pianist now working who is under the age of 40. Less deserving of accolades was the Orchestra accompanying him. They are an impressively tall, fair-haired bunch, but they look a lot more compelling than they sound. Their brass often seemed not up to snuff, and the strings were far from silvery. However, that was not the main thing wrong with the first 3/5 of their program. Instead, the problem was that they obviously didn't care and hadn't thought much about the music, Andsnes included.

First up was Haydn's Piano Concerto #5. Andsnes played it without delicacy, plan or energy, conducting the orchestra better than he did himself. Next came the obligatory atonal piece, written for the occasion, and (thankfully) never to be heard again.

The first half of the concert ended with an arrangement of Beethoven's last string quartet. Performed by this small orchestra, it had neither the drama and clarity of the string quartet version nor the massed power that a transcription for a full orchestra might offer.

Finally, the concert ended with Mozart's D-minor Piano Concerto. It's sometimes said that Beethoven told a pupil that he thought he could never write anything its equal, and Andsnes and the orchestra, suddenly certain of what they were doing and wanted to say, showed us why Beethoven might have said this sincerely. Here was heart-stopping drama and melting beauty. But why did we only get this at the very close of the evening?