Review: Chinese soloist Wu Wei stole the show in his performance with the Minnesota Orchestra

Wu Wei plays a mean sheng.

What’s a sheng, you ask? It’s a Chinese mouth organ with an ancestry that dates back three millennia. At first glance, it looks something like the severed bottom of a contrabassoon, all dark varnished wood and metal levers. But a closer view shows that it’s actually something like a tiny reproduction of a pipe organ, its air coming from the mouth of the musician playing it. In its upper register, it sounds like a harmonica, at its low end closer to an English horn. In between, it has a reedy sound all its own.

Wei is the Chinese musician who has brought it to orchestral concert halls. And, this week, he’s playing it in the company of Finnish conductor Dima Slobodeniouk and the Minnesota Orchestra, soloing on a work by another Finn, Jukka Tiensuu. At Thursday’s midday concert, it proved a thrilling expedition to parts doubtless unknown to most of the almost-capacity crowd. And the virtuosity of the Grammy-winning Wei came through so clearly that he earned a lengthy standing ovation and provided an encore.

In fact, so exciting was the experience that it threw the main attraction into eclipse. That would be Gustav Holst’s very popular suite, “The Planets,” which received a pretty good interpretation from Slobodeniouk and the orchestra (and the offstage women of the Minnesota Chorale), but felt as if a nod to convention and familiarity after the intrepidly exotic Tiensuu piece.

And “Teoton” was indeed a world apart from the century-older “Planets.” Coming after another Finnish piece from the mid-2010s — Lotta Wennäkoski’s combination of chaos and contemplation, “Flounce” — Tiensuu’s “Teoton” proved a fascinating showcase for what the sheng can do. In the opening “Fever,” Wei exchanged darting phrases with various sections of the orchestra before percussively popping atop the strings’ long, slow glissandos.

The instrument is also capable of producing haunting sounds, as on the eerie “Adrift,” which bore echoes of Claude Debussy in its melancholy beauty. Like the work’s opening movement, “Game” offered a call and response between Wei and various musicians in the orchestra. But here the soloist bounded back and forth like a fencer thrusting and parrying with the cellos before launching into a cadenza that resonated with the kind of frantic anxiety associated with Philip Glass.

The concluding “Bliss” underlined not only Wei’s artistry, but how perfectly in sync the orchestra was with the work’s many twists and turns of mood and sound world. This was particularly true of a transporting section that evoked raindrops trickling down a window pane, Wei taking listeners on transporting melodic lines that suddenly became dense chords. The ensuing ovation earned a high-energy encore, Wei’s “Dragon Dance,” which had the feel of a jazz waltz.

As for “The Planets,” it was a fine showcase for the orchestra, particularly the dark thunder of the timpani and low brass on “Mars,” the ethereal solos of violinist Erin Keefe and principal French horn Michael Gast on “Venus,” and the sonorous seven-horn fanfares that orbit around “Jupiter.” But this was a day when a small, ancient Asian instrument managed to steal the show from a big, booming orchestra.

With: Conductor Dima Slobodeniouk, sheng soloist Wu Wei and members of the Minnesota Chorale

What: Works by Lotta Wennakoski, Jukka Tiensuu and Gustav Holst

When: 8 p.m. Sat.

Where: Orchestra Hall, 1111 Nicollet Mall, Mpls.

Tickets: $89-$140, available at 612-371-5656 or minnesotaorchestra.org

Classical music writer Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.