Went to a couple of concerts the week before last that I keep meaning to mention. Tuesday was the first piano concert of the season at Boston Conservatory, and it was a packed house that assembled to hear Ursula Oppens and Jerome Lowenthal play two-piano works by Debussy and Messaien. I've never seen either performer before (Oppens tenure at Northwestern started after I graduated), and while they were both score-bound, they produced an enjoyable, exciting program. The first half was the Debussy, some unfamiliar late work followed by the much more familiar orchestral Nocturnes, arranged by Ravel, which was the real crowd-pleaser.



Purely by accident, I ended up sitting between Michael Lewin and Janice Weber, and chatted with Ms. Weber beforehand and during the intermission about Messaien. The second half of the program was his Visions de l'Amen, a collection of seven dense, lush, dissonant works that I'd never heard before. Oppens and Lowenthal were in total command of the music, I think the lighting on stage wasn't optimal as Oppens kept squinting at the music as though she'd never seen it before, and Lowenthal is not a tall individual so they had trouble hitting the same chord at exactly the same time because with the music in the way they could barely see each other. There were no program notes, which doesn't do Messaien any favors, but Lowenthal translated the title of each movement ahead of time. The audience responded enthusiastically, but there were no encores, the scheduled program having served as enough of a workout for both performers and listeners in and of itself. For some reason, Dyer chose to attend a recital of minimalist piano music at NEC instead, but I can't imagine it was better than this.



Three days later I had to leave work early to pick up Mom at the airport anyway, so I left even earlier and went to the BSO for the first time this season to hear Yefim Bronfman play the Liszt 2nd Piano Concerto, conducted by Charles Dutoit. I believe I've heard Bronfman before in some equally noisy concerto, but this is the sort of repertoire he excels in, and he didn't disappoint. Dyer's review from the Thursday night concert had said the piano sounded bad, but maybe they wheeled out the wrong one by mistake because on Friday afternoon it was fine. Like most Liszt, the 2nd concerto is through-composed, with the same theme cropping up in a variety of ways, and the technical fireworks in the piece feel like an organic part of the whole rather than just tacked on for flashiness' sake. Bronfman was dead accurate and had no trouble being heard, but also providing a real feeling to the music without just making noise. Dutoit, who looked younger than I thought he would be, at least from a distance, kept everything under control in what must be some tricky entrances. I was inspired a few days later to order the music for both this and the Totentanz, the latter of which I have a few recordings that make me curious as to what the music actually looks like. The 2nd concerto is supposed to be the quieter, more introspective of the Liszt concertos, but while those may be the parts you remember at the end, there's plenty of octaves and glissandi and all the rest in between.



The rest of the program was the Mother Goose Suite, and the second half was the Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances, which I've heard the BSO do before. The program was a little on the short side since Bronfman was original going to play the Brahms 1st, but it was all worth hearing and well done. There aren't any more piano soloists with the BSO until January, so this was a good way to tide things over until then.