CAMBRIDGE -- My friend and colleague Alan Rich attended the Boston Symphony Orchestra's world premiere of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra in 1944. He was working as a second-balcony usher in Symphony Hall, and afterward, when he was heading backstage to change his clothing, he bumped into Bartok himself. They shook hands, and more than 60 years later, Rich still remembers the expression in his suffering eyes. Bartok was fatally ill with leukemia, and as almost everyone who hears the piece can sense, it is extraordinary that a man in such terrible condition created one of the great 20th-century works of blazing energy and life-affirming orchestral brilliance.
Benjamin Zander led the Boston Philharmonic in a stirring performance of the Concerto for Orchestra on Sunday afternoon in Sanders Theatre, the third of three concerts last week. The orchestra itself is a lively mix of students, amateurs, and professionals, and what was sometimes lacking in polish was made up for in the visceral excitement of the music-making. Woodwind solos were well-characterized, the brass section sounded broad and full, and the strings created some eerie, evocative moods for the famous stretches of night music. Zander's direction from the podium conveyed his passionate belief in the power of this score.
Before the Bartok, the Venezuelan-born pianist Gabriela Montero, 37, took the stage to play Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1. Anyone expecting white-hot Dionysian intensity in the manner of Montero's mentor, Martha Argerich, might have been surprised. Montero's reading maintained some unusually cool reserve but was nonetheless musically insightful and technically brilliant, and it still displayed the necessary firepower at the work's climaxes. She had a particularly striking way of driving the rapid upward-sloping runs with jolts of power from the bass, and her cadenzas swayed with a graceful sense of freedom and fantasy.
Word is spreading quickly about the encore improvisations that have become Montero's calling card. She typically solicits tunes from the audience and then spins out elaborate riffs right on the spot. It may be all in a day's work for a jazz artist, but improvisation in the classical field has sadly become a near-extinct art.
On Sunday Montero played three such encores. The most fun was when someone near the front row shouted for "La Cucaracha." Montero said "That's a great one!" and then promptly took this humble folk song about a cockroach on a grand stroll, splicing it into music that resembled Bach's "Goldberg Variations," dropping it by a tango club, schooling it in ragtime, and on and on. Word has it that Montero soon plans on relocating to the Boston area. New York's loss should be Boston's gain.
By Jeremy Eichler, Globe Staff