Pianist Jonathan Biss did more Sunday than just play Johannes Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major. He channeled the composer while performing what is considered to be one of Brahms’ most expansive and ambitious works.
Biss performed the challenging piece with precision and passion with the Bangor Symphony Orchestra at the Collins Center for the Arts at the University of Maine. The audience rose to its feet and roared its approval, successfully wooing Biss into a Felix Mendelssohn encore.
Conductor and Music Director Lucas Richman and the orchestra matched Biss’ dynamic performance note for note. They captured all the complexity of Brahm’s four movements with elegance and verve following the intermission. Biss’ interpretation of the piece won’t soon be forgotten by concertgoers.
This was not Biss’s first trip to Greater Bangor. In 2008, he performed Brahms’ first piano concerto with the symphony at Peakes Auditorium at Bangor High School while the Collins Center and the Hudson Museum were undergoing a major renovation. When he returned to his home in New York City, the BSO asked him to help find a new grand piano for the Orono concert hall. This weekend was the first time he’d played the Steinway since recommending it 15 or so years ago.
The overture from the opera “Donna Diana” by Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek and Ernest Chausson’s Symphony in B-flat opened the program. The overture is best known as the theme music for the 1950s radio and television series “Sergeant Preston of the Yukon.”
Kenneth Woods, conductor of the English Symphony Orchestra in Worcester in the West Midlands of England, has described the overture as “bursting with invention, energy and good humor.” That is exactly how Richman and the orchestra performed the piece to the delight of the audience.
Chausson’s only symphony premiered in 1891 and “stands at a pivotal point in French music history,” according to the program notes. The Paris-born composer died eight years later in a bicycle accident at age 44.
The symphony captured all the glory of the first movement, the inherent sadness of the second and the joy of the third. Sunday’s concert was a stupendous start to the orchestra’s 130th season.
The concert may be streamed Friday through Oct. 17 at watch.bangorsymphony.org. The BSO will perform the score to the Disney film “Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas” at 3 p.m. Oct. 26 at the Collins Center for the Arts. For ticket information, call 207-581-1755 or visit bangorsymphony.org.