Rachmaninoff’s piece has a well-earned reputation for sounding weighty and distended.
Yet van Zweden, conducting with coiled intensity and sharp, clear-cut gestures, made it into something improbably lean and dynamic. Accents were crisp and precise. Melodies that usually wander had shape and definition. Big moments never sapped the music of forward momentum.
It was roughly akin to what the period-instrument movement has done for the performance of early Romantic works. Tempos were brisk, even in the luxuriant slow movement, and the rhythms danced in a way they seldom do in this piece. Perhaps most remarkable, van Zweden made Rachmaninoff’s textures transparent, no small feat in such darkly colored music.
The orchestra, for its part, sounded superb, the brass and low strings in particular. William Hudgins (clarinet), Robert Sheena (English horn), and Richard Sebring (horn), made exemplary solo contributions, among others.
Given the Rachmaninoff’s low-calorie diet, it was somewhat surprising that the program opened with a rather weighty account of Beethoven, thanks to a larger than usual complement of strings on stage. Van Zweden was even more demonstrative here than in the Rachmaninoff, at times sculpting every facet of a musical phrase.
Emanuel Ax was the pianist, and he is such a regular BSO guest that it becomes possible to forget how exceptional his artistry is. The concerto came off as a genuine dialogue between equals, in part because Ax played with the kind of tonal beauty that could match the heft of the orchestra’s sound. Among many remarkable moments one stood out: The coda of the slow movement, where each note from the piano seemed to occupy its own distinct space in Symphony Hall.
