Beethoven: Gerard Schwarz, cond., John Lill, Seattle Symphony, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 1.03.2007 (BJ)

Whizz-kids of the piano come and go. In some cases they grow into artists of distinction, in others they go as soon as they came, and in all too many instances they acquire careers out of proportion to their exiguous talents. Meanwhile, without perhaps ever becoming household names à la Horowitz or Rubinstein, fine musicians like John Lill go on playing wonderfully year after year. So it was a pleasure to welcome this English pianist to Seattle for a pair of programs encompassing all five of Beethoven’s concertos for his instrument.

At the first of these concerts, supported with gusto and near-perfect unanimity by the Seattle Symphony under its music director, Gerard Schwarz, Lill showed yet again why he is widely regarded as a musicians’ musician. The two works on this program were the Fourth and Fifth concertos, and I do not think I have ever heard a pair of performances that so expertly delineated their sharply contrasted characters. In the Fourth Concerto before intermission Lill took every opportunity to relax the pulse and refine the dynamics in response to every poetic impulse in this supremely poetic score. This was music-making in the grand manner, realized with tone that ranged from the occasional thunderous (but never harsh) fortissimo to a ravishingly soft (but never exaggerated) pianissimo. Lill’s penchant here for slowing down at crucial “plot points” was evidence of daring–but where the Pogoreliches and Lang Langs of this world impose their interpretative ideas on the music from outside, Lill drew his from a profound identification with what Beethoven wrote, and with the tradition he worked in.

I waited with fascination, then, to hear how he would approach the bigger, more assertive, and altogether more outward-oriented Fifth Concerto. In the event, just as his delicacy in No. 4 was never allowed to undercut the power of the climaxes, so in No. 5 pianissimo touches were never lacking at the right moments, while the huge declarative statements of such passages as the cadenza-like flourishes that set the first moment on its course were delivered with truly astonishing strength and solidity, and with a freedom from the tyranny of the bar-line that attained spontaneity without obscuring the arc of the solo line. Rhythmically, too, the performance took an opposite tack to what we had heard in No. 4. This time, even in passages like the first movement’s subordinate theme where pianists often enjoy pausing to enjoy the scenery, Lill kept the music moving eagerly ahead.

There were two places, one in each concerto, that might with advantage have been done differently. In one of the episodes in the Fourth Concerto’s finale, I would have enjoyed, under the beautifully shaped treble line, a little more emphasis on the magically propulsive left-hand part. And the slow movement of No. 5 was, I felt, just a little too slow, having the effect of four beats to the measure rather than Beethoven’s indicated alla breve meter. But the near-immobility Lill and Schwarz fashioned did have the result that the first measures of the finale came as a genuinely thrilling explosion under Lill’s hands. In any case, these were minor points that in no substantial way diminished the splendor of the occasion.

Bernard Jacobson