Pianist Brilliant From Rachmaninoff To Rock

Spokane Symphony Friday, Feb. 27, Opera House

Christopher O’Riley, the Spokane Symphony’s guest soloist, took the Opera House audience in a startling direction Friday night. Following a brilliantly played Rachmaninoff concerto, O’Riley headed straight into rock ‘n’ roll territory with his first encore, Aaron Jay Kernis’ “Superstar Etude No. 1.”

The “Superstar Etude” pays tribute to that great American piano virtuoso of rock and country, Jerry Lee Lewis. O’Riley had Jerry Lee’s style down pat. The machine-gun hail of repeated notes, the shouting, the sweeping double-handed glissandos and the playing of the instrument with elbows and left foot - all were there in their noisy glory. The audience loved it, and so did I. O’Riley is a performer who commands different styles as few concert pianists do.

This was only the surprise ending to a concert that already had had plenty of variety. Jung-Ho Pak, the symphony’s associate conductor, chose an intriguing program of three established, but unhackneyed, symphonic masterpieces.

Pak began with Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “A London Symphony.” The performance exuded an unhurried nostalgia, not only in its pace but also in the luscious orchestral tone and some especially fine solo playing by the orchestra’s principal players. Even the blurry, soft-focus attacks Pak’s conducting always seems to elicit from the orchestra worked well in this symphony.

There was nostalgia, too, in Arthur Honegger’s “Pacific 231,” the composer’s tribute to the power and speed of the steam locomotive. Honegger managed to squeeze in every squeak, chug, hiss and whistle of a locomotive at rest, accelerating, then plunging along at top speed. Pak and the orchestra made a swift trip in Honegger’s engine and seemed to be having a good time doing it, too.

Pak and O’Riley closed the concert with Rachmaninoff’s 1st Piano Concerto. This concerto is rarely performed, yet it seems so familiar. The composers of Hollywood movie scores in the 1940s and ‘50s shamelessly plundered Rachmaninoff’s long, yearning melodies and darkly rich “Russian” harmonies. And this is where it all started.

O’Riley was superb. His tone could glitter brilliantly, as it did in the closing measures of the first and third movements, sing winningly as it did in the second-movement nocturne or hang delicately, even playfully, over the orchestral sections in the finale.

Pak tends to make the orchestra tag along slightly behind the soloist much of the time. That was a detriment, especially in the fast sections, but fortunately, not a fatal one. O’Riley’s clear, rhythmic playing drew things energetically along.

In addition to the “Superstar Etude,” O’Riley played a second encore, Chopin’s turbulent Etude in C minor, Op. 25, No. 12, “just to show you your piano’s still OK,” the pianist said. Both piano and pianist were much, much better than OK.

, DataTimes