Kirill Gerstein, Artist in Residence with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra this season, is one of the most versatile and reflective pianists of our time. The unusual coupling of two works that he now played with the BR Symphoniker and the conductor Alan Gilbert in the Herkulessaal testifies to this. The “Burlesque” by Richard Strauss from 1886 and Sergej Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini” from 1934 have a lot in common: the play with styles, the humor, but also the melancholy that results – and not least the virtuosity that the two twenty-minute pieces demand from the pianist and the orchestra.
Just enough for Gerstein, who is able to create clarity even in the densest tangle of notes, articulates concisely, shades timbres in a variety of ways, sings out lines. And always sees itself as a partner of the BR-Symphoniker, entering into a real dialogue with its soloists. Gerstein doesn’t have to force anything, not even the humour, plays with a lightness that gives both pieces something elegiac, something like a passing dream. To which even the encore fits: Fritz Kreisler’s “Liebesleid” in the piano arrangement by Rachmaninoff.
Correspondingly, one is reluctant to do without Gerstein in the second half, in the piano quartet op. 25 by Johannes Brahms. However, it is not the original with piano that is on the program here, but also an arrangement, namely the orchestral version by Arnold Schönberg from 1937. Winds and percussion are unusual enough, but it also develops humorous traits, at the latest when the xylophone and glockenspiel join the frantic final rondo . Alan Gilbert, ex-chief of the New York Philharmonic, draws the Brahms-Schönberg bastard with precision, in a clear outline, full of verve and energy. What an unusually intelligent, enjoyable concert evening!