When the tiny, Yoda-like figure first appeared on the stage of Davies
Hall tonight, the massive, steady applause sounded very much as if Cal
Ripken Jr.  walked into the hall. Just as the great shortstop made a
virtue of "showing up," Alicia de Larrocha has endured.

She made her US debut in San Francisco 48 years ago. Tonight, at 79, she
was about to play her farewell performance here. The audience celebrated
her before she played a note, acknowledging those 80-plus performances
over a half a century, but Larrocha just waved at the crowd tolerantly,
kicked the piano bench into position, and went to work.

Workmanlike too was the performance, the Haydn Piano Concerto, steady,
cautious, on the dry side. Falla's "Nights in the Gardens of Spain" was
richer, more alive, but the real singing came from Peter Wyrick's cello
and other string principals. At the end, a standing ovation for Larrocha
and a rare orchestra fanfare salute.

On the podium for the evening, was Finnish conductor Osmo Vanska,
music-director designate of the Minnesota Orchestra. You'll hear a lot
from and about this youthful 49-year-old. Extremely talented, but often
erratic, he brings Simon Rattle-like focus and intensity to the music,
but then he substitutes volume for power, bluster for a solid, big sound.

The concert's first half belonged to Larrocha, but with the Nielsen Third
Symphony, the second half was for the conductor to conquer or fail. He
did a bit of both. He can an experienced conductor leap onto the podium
and start up the mighty engine of the "Sinfonia espansiva" before regaining
balance on landing... or allowing the orchestra a moment to hear what
they will play before they actually do? As the result of such a simple
blunder, the first five minutes of the opening Allegro was rushed and
unbalanced.

Later in the movement, the great rolling tutti sounded noisy at times,
but the orchestra played extremely well, the brass especially impressive.
To the conductor's credit, transparent texture brought woodwinds forward,
so the listener could hear strangely Stravinsky-like passages seldom
given such prominence.

The good Vanska showed up also in the second movement with a gorgeous
sound in the quiet, mysterious passages, He got excellent work from the
orchestra, and soprano Twyla Robinson and baritone Hugh Russell in their
wordless solos. What should be a precisely snappy rhythm in the third
movement became something less than that, making the listener nostalgic
for Herbert Blomstedt's Nielsen, often heard in Davies. With Vanska,
some phrases that should be distinct were not allowed to breathe
sufficiently, another characteristic that suffers in comparison with
Blomstedt. Still, the concluding movement unfolded very well, the uneven,
now-good-now-troubled performance ending on a high note.

Janos Gereben/SF
[log in to unmask]