Review: Minnesota Orchestra opens its season with South Korean piano prodigy Yunchan Lim

There’s much to celebrate as the Minnesota Orchestra launches its 122nd season.

For one thing, October marks the 50th anniversary of Orchestra Hall, and a lot of works from the 1974-75 season are finding their way onto this year’s concert programs. The orchestra also has a new interim president in Brent Assink, who headed up the San Francisco Symphony for 18 years, leading the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra before that.

But the main reason to celebrate is that music director Thomas Søndergård now has a year under his belt as music director and is sending much clearer signals about what audiences can anticipate under his leadership.

At Friday’s almost-sold-out season-opening concert, Søndergård stayed true to form in his musical preferences: He seems to enjoy works that show off the orchestra’s way with tonal color and texture, especially European pieces of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

But the big attraction among the four works performed on opening night was a piece known better for showing off the skills of a pianist than that of an orchestra.

That would be Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, which featured a soloist creating a serious buzz in the classical world, South Korea’s Yunchan Lim. This prodigious player won America’s marquee piano competition, the Van Cliburn, at age 18 two years ago. And he helped make his mark with Rachmaninoff: His performance of that composer’s Piano Concerto No. 3 at the competition not only helped Lim win first prize but has now earned over 15 million views on YouTube.

That might suggest that this young pianist knows how to wow an audience with the kind of pianistic pyrotechnics that Rachmaninoff can inspire, but Friday’s pleasant surprise was that Lim seems more interested in exploring the composer’s emotional depths with a reflective approach. In so doing, he proved himself an ideal collaborator for Søndergård and the Minnesota Orchestra, who took full advantage of every sumptuous string passage and scintillating solo within the concerto’s score.

The ensuing standing ovation seemed as much for orchestra as soloist, but Lim sustained his subtle, contemplative approach on an encore from the pen of Franz Liszt.

The concert was otherwise Italian — or, rather, conveyed impressions of Italy from composers French, Swedish and, ultimately, Italian, Ottorino Respighi’s very popular 1924 tone poem, “The Pines of Rome,” closing the concert. With that, Søndergård gave a sense of what turning the volume up to 11 sounds like in his hands. Shuddering on the podium, his outstretched arms seeming to implore the orchestra to give more — be it volume, intensity or emotion — it left me with my strongest sense yet of what the word “fortissimo” means to this conductor.

Similar levels of sound poured forth on the turbulent opening of Andrea Tarrodi’s “Liguria,” a piece that evokes crashing waves on the northwest coast of Italy. Yet, just as with the Rachmaninoff, the orchestra was at its most powerful when finding a place of quiet reflection.

With: Conductor Thomas Søndergård and pianist Yunchan Lim

What: Works by Hector Berlioz, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Andrea Tarrodi and Ottorino Respighi

When: 7 p.m. Sat.

Where: Orchestra Hall, 1111 Nicollet Mall, Mpls.

Tickets: $56-$131, available at 612-371-5656 or minnesotaorchestra.org

Rob Hubbard is a Twin Cities classical music writer. Reach him at wordhub@yahoo.com.