This was a rather confusing evening. The pianist with the most famous
*right* hand in history returned to his home town (missing it by a few
miles), to play the Ravel Concerto for the *Left* Hand and capped his
appearance with a French orchestra by playing an old hit by Jerome Kern.

Leon Fleisher is from San Francisco, but his "return" tonight was as
a soloist with Orchestre National de Lyon in neighboring Berkeley's
Zellerbach Hall. That famous right hand went out of commission in 1962,
but when Rolfer Tessy Brungardt entered the picture 30 years later,
Fleisher started playing "normal" literature again.

So why the Ravel now? He won't say. And he responded to the extended
ovation by playing "All the Things You Are," not bothering to establish
the connection with Ravel or Lyon, but putting in a big plug for the
local arranger, Fleisher's former student, pianist Stephen Prutsman.

The Lyon orchestra presented some other puzzlers too: under its American
conductor, David Robertson, it performed Stravinsky's "Le Sacre du
printemps" (a French title, see?) and the Debussy "Jeux," in one of the
more uneven performances in my memory. Cohesion was lacking most of the
time, the first violin section became unglued at a critical moment, and
although the Fleisher encore was yet to come, my response to the Debussy
was: "Time and again I've longed for adventure, Something to make my
heart beat the faster."

The Lyon musicians are competent enough, but the orchestra doesn't have
either a brilliant sound or a special section. The strings don't sound
particularly lustrous and the winds are not more than adequate. Wind
instruments are the best of the lot.

The orchestra was in better shape while playing the Ravel, Robertson
supporting Fleisher enthusiastically. As for the soloist, even in the
midst of breathless audience enthusiasm, I experienced a deja vu, going
back to Fleisher's great 1996 "comeback" concert with the San Francisco
Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas, playing the first Brahms concerto.

As then, so it was tonight: more a "mind-over-matter" affair than an
involving, satisfying music. The effort is palpable, audible, turning
the performance into an event more than a great concert.  Chances are
this is a minority opinion of one, although. in the event, one is a
significant number against the surpisingly small audience, filling less
than half the auditorium.

It's troubling to consider what the orchestra's other, somewhat
more contemporary and less starry, program must have pulled if
Debussy-Ravel-Stravinsky-Fleisher couldn't deck the hall. For the record,
that other concert featured Stravinsky's "Symphonies of Wind Instruments,
Boulez's "Originel," Wagner's "Siegfried Idyll" and Schoenberg's Chamber
Symphony No. 1.

Janos Gereben/SF
www.sfcv.org
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