Järvi, Buniatishvili, CSO Put It All Together

Paavo Järvi and Khatia Buniatishvili

Everything about it was special, from the return of music director laureate Paavo Järvi, to guest artist, pianist Khatia Buniatishvili, to the program, which included the CSO premiere of Carl Nielsen’s “Aladdin” Suite.

Especially remarkable was the way the musicians performed. It was as if Järvi had never left the orchestra, so powerfully did they connect throughout the concert.

And “powerful” is the only way to describe Buniatishvili’s performance of Liszt’s knuckle-busting Piano Concerto No. 2. The master himself would have been vastly impressed, so easily did she surmount its technical challenges.

Stunning in a long red dress, Georgian-born Buniatishvili, 27, sat down at the piano with manifest authority. Whatever the score demanded she delivered: whizzing over the keys in stunning displays of virtuosity, and touching them with the greatest sensitivity in quieter moments, as in the soft, gentle introduction of the principal theme.

The audience could not restrain its enthusiasm as she delivered brilliant glissandi up and down the piano at the end, but there was no encore.

Greatly enhancing the performance were the beautiful solos by principal cellist Ilya Finkelshteyn.

It seemed as if the storied genie himself called up Nielsen’s “Aladdin.” The seven-movement Suite pulsed with color beginning with the “Oriental Festive March,” with its staccato trumpets. Sweet by contrast was “Aladdin’s Dream and Dance of the Morning Mist,” couched in muted strings. Everyone had something to do in this technicolor work, from sparkling woodwinds to touches of decorative percussion, both prominent in the “Hindu Dance.”

Despite the work’s oriental flavor, it strongly recalled the music of Edvard Grieg. Unique in its effect, however, was “The Marketplace at Ispahan,” where four ensembles within the orchestra each “go their own way,” as in a crowd at the market. Järvi even stopped conducting at one point and the movement ended without resolution. (Though the music recalls Charles Ives here, Nielsen was apparently unaware of him.)
The Suite ended with a pounding, exhilarating “African Dance,” again to the delight of the audience.

Järvi ended the program with the Symphony No. 1 by Dmitri Shostakovich. Remarkably, the Symphony was the composer’s “senior thesis” at the Leningrad Conservatory (what were you doing when you were 19?), and it remains one of his most popular. It begins with great good humor (reflecting perhaps Shostakovich’s work at the time as a pianist for the cinema), turning more serious in the last two movements. There is prominent use of piano in the second movement (a scherzo), here performed to dramatic effect by Michael Chertock.

What impressed more than anything in the performance (and in the concert as a whole) was the corporate virtuosity of the CSO. Everyone had something important to do and they did it spectacularly well. Compliments to principal oboist Dwight Parry for his plaintive solo in the slow (third) movement and to principal trumpet Matthew Ernst for his impossibly faraway solo near the end. Principal timpanist Patrick Schleker had a stark solo moment in the finale, cellist Finkelshteyn a tear-jerking one.

It all came together stirringly in the work’s brass-laced, fanfare-like end

Before the concert, CSO president Trey Devey announced the endowment of a new CSO chair, the Marc Bohlke Chair for violin, given by Katrin and Manfred Bohlke and now held by James Braid.

The concert – not to miss – repeats at 8 p.m. tonight in Music Hall. Tickets begin at $12. Call (513) 381-3300, or order online at www.cincinnatisymphony.org