Review: Pianist Anne-Marie McDermott performs mesmerizing, haunting program with the SPCO

I’ve long had a soft spot for pianist Anne-Marie McDermott. Not just because I appreciate her very expressive playing, but because of her back story.

Here was an Irish-American girl from the New York borough of Queens who was home-schooled in music by her mother (as were her two string-playing sisters). Her mother died when McDermott was 15, and the pianist basically started scratching out a living by accompanying every singer and instrumentalist she could and picking up chamber music gigs. While she’s had valuable mentors and teachers along the way, she’s mostly built a career via an indomitable work ethic.

That path has brought the veteran pianist to St. Paul this weekend, where she’s premiering a new piano concerto she and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra commissioned from American composer Chris Rogerson. The work is called “Samaa’,” which is Arabic for “sky,” and it was inspired by Rogerson’s travels in the Middle East, particularly experiences he had in war-torn Yemen and a moonlit night in Iran.

At midday Friday, McDermott and the SPCO made a powerful case that this new concerto deserves a wider audience. This spacious soundscape mesmerizes one minute and summons up anxiety in the next. But it’s also marvelously melodic and often hauntingly beautiful, standing as the very rewarding centerpiece of a program that shows off McDermott’s versatility. For she also joins SPCO musicians for sextets by French composers Francis Poulenc and Ernest Chausson.

Poulenc’s Sextet is for piano and woodwind quintet, and it proved a fine showcase for the orchestra’s wind players, who smoothly negotiated its many mood swings with consummate skill. The piece is playful, mysterious, schmaltzy, frivolous, reflective and melancholy, often within a matter of minutes. It proved an exciting odyssey.

Rogerson’s concerto began life as a single-movement piece that McDermott and the SPCO premiered at Colorado’s Bravo! Vail Music Festival (where she’s artistic director) in 2022. Now that piece stands as the concerto’s engrossing opening movement, launched by a meditative duet between the pianist and percussionist Matthew McClung — encircled by gongs — and taking listeners to a place of urgent uneasiness, explosiveness giving way to heavy-hearted solos from cellist Julie Albers and violist Maiya Papach.

The middle movement, dubbed “Stars,” is a hauntingly hypnotic dialogue between pianist and percussionist that opens with McClung fingering the rim of a water glass. The finale, “Moon,” moves from a desperate, striving quality to a horn-laden sense of majesty and an eventual wistful parting. It’s understandable why McDermott feels a connection with this composer, for they both seem very emotionally honest artists.

The concert’s second half is given over to Ernest Chausson’s Concerto for Piano, Violin and String Quartet, and McDermott and five SPCO musicians — including violin soloist Kyu-Young Kim — made it an ideal embodiment of late 19th-century French romanticism. It’s a piece that implores you to feel every emotion deeply, sometimes bursting with urgent longing, other times whispering sweet, seductive phrases. The music flowed forth from the stage like a rushing river overflowing its banks, capping a concert full of turbulent emotions and masterful musicianship.

With: Pianist Anne-Marie McDermott

What: Works by Francis Poulenc, Chris Rogerson and Ernest Chausson

When: 7 p.m. Sat., 2 p.m. Sun.

Where: Ordway Concert Hall, 345 Washington St., St. Paul

Tickets: $12-$55 (students and children free), at 651-291-1144 or thespco.org

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