Another pinch-hit win for CSO

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

Riccardo Muti has demonstrated that his unique spirit animates activities at Orchestra Hall even during his absence. The commitment the Chicago Symphony Orchestra players have to music and to their leader remains enviably strong, even during the last three weeks of programmatic reshuffling.

This week’s CSO subscription concerts are being handled by Italian conductor Gianandrea Noseda, who made an excellent debut here just under a year ago. They are raised to an even higher level by Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, returning as a soloist here after a too-long five-year absence and giving his first Chicago performances of the tremendous Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2.

Just 40, Andsnes has had a major international concert and recording career since he was a teenager, making his CSO debuts at Ravinia and downtown in 1993 and 1995. Rather than relying on flash or gimmickry, Andsnes adds slowly to his repertoire and digs deep into works — whether solo, chamber, or with orchestra — in a way that recalls the masters of the past. In the days when concert soloists were international celebrities based on their artistry alone, he’d be a household name.

Having followed his career for more than two decades and regularly visiting the chamber music festival that he co-led in Norway for many years, I think there is still something disarming about this man’s talent: Rarely does someone have his level of technical ability, interpretive insight and sometimes almost otherworldly musicality without any trace of personal or performance eccentricity. Here again, he is a reminder of the sort of ideal player that Brahms and Schubert -- a great Andsnes specialty -- wrote for: a technical wizard who meets the music on the composer’s terms and is carried away enough by that communion to move an audience as well.

The grand 45-minute, four-movement Brahms concerto is so loved and well-known that a listener can move in for the aural equivalent of closeups and back out for the sonic big picture without any loss of the work as a whole. Double trills, light passage work and oceanic chord sequences came off as child’s play in Andsnes’ hands but never as show-off displays. Prompted by turns by Daniel Gingrich’s seductively mellow horn introduction and John Sharp’s heart-touching treatment of the famous slow movement solo, the pianist also showed his anchor in collaborative music-making, with principals, orchestra and soloist bringing out the best in each other.

I traveled to New York three years ago to hear Andsnes and Muti perform this work with the New York Philharmonic, which marked the two musicians’ first meeting and collaboration. It’s no criticism of Noseda’s strong late save to say that he did not match the special electricity that ran between Muti and Andsnes then. Noseda’s was a collegial take with no attempt to create a “contest” with the soloist as is often, and mistakenly, done.

Despite his Italian heritage and Turin base, Noseda was a longtime assistant and protege of Valery Gergiev in St. Petersburg, and the Russian works on the program gave him more chances to shine. I would still like to know what Muti wanted to demonstrate with Stravinsky’s 1928 Tchaikovsky tribute ballet “The Fairy’s Kiss,” here offered in the composer’s later 25-minute suite. To me, the piece has never been either Stravinsky or Tchaikovsky, but Noseda captured well its start-stop back-and-forth nature. While the scheduled “Arcana” of Edgard Varese was missed, it would have been too much to expect from a recruited sub. I and much of the audience enjoyed hearing an orchestra of the CSO’s caliber play the late 19th-century pseudo-Oriental melodies of Alexander Borodin’s “Polovtsian Dances” from his unfinished opera “Prince Igor.” Even though many know this music from Broadway’s 1950s “Kismet,” with Noseda’s knowledge and commitment, Mathieu Dufour’s golden flute and Russian-born Eugene Izotov’s elegant oboe solo for “Stranger in Paradise,” all that was missing was an encore of Khachaturian’s plate-spinning “Sabre Dance” from “Gayane” to make the evening complete.