Piano forte

Brigitte Engerer crosses the Atlantic

By Doug Hubley

Portland Symphony Orchestra Classical Series Concert, 7:30 p.m., at Merrill Auditorium, April 10. Call (207) 842-0800.

BRIGITTE ENGERER: making the piano sing and dance.

Along with the birds now officially on the wing, and the young men with fancies lightly turned to love, this season affects symphony lovers too. Or so Toshi Shimada believes. “When spring comes, people probably want a little more sugar,” laughs the conductor and music director of the Portland Symphony Orchestra.

Meaning a little less angst and a little less intellectualizing, and a little more sweetness, not to mention light. Hence the Classical Series program the PSO plays Tuesday. While nothing therein would qualify as cotton candy, it’s nonetheless got plenty of dessert potential. There’s Tchaikovsky’s dramatic Piano Concerto No. 1, Prokofiev’s colorful suite from his score for the film Lieutenant Kijé, and Brahms’ Symphony No. 3, whose third movement still nails this listener 18 years after Music Appreciation 101.

Slated for 7:30 p.m. in Merrill Auditorium, the concert has another treat in store as well. Taking the spotlight role in the Tchaikovsky is a pianist who, despite a powerhouse reputation in Europe, rarely performs on this side of the Atlantic. Based in Paris, Brigitte Engerer is flying west solely for her PSO performance, a notable mutual vote of confidence.

Shimada’s faith in Engerer (pronounced en-jer-ay) is based partly on reports from a trusted source: his wife, pianist Eva Virsik. Born in Slovakia, Virsik established her career while the Soviet Union still held sway over eastern Europe. As it happened, she and Engerer studied with the same teacher, the esteemed Stanislav Neuhaus, at the Moscow Conservatory.

“So I heard about her reputation from my wife – ‘she’s the greatest artist,’ ” Shimada says. When Engerer’s American management contacted him about a possible booking, he wasted no time.

Born in Tunisia to French parents, Engerer grew up in France. Between 1970 and 1980 she pulled off a sort of grand slam of the major European piano competitions, winning prizes in Moscow, Paris, and Brussels. An invitation from Herbert Von Karajan to debut with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1982 made her a star, and it’s been dreary old success and adulation ever since.

Hankering to reprise the Tchaikovsky concerto — which he and the PSO last did in the ’87 - ’88 season, the second year of his tenure — Shimada thought Engerer would be a good fit. For one thing, she has ample experience with the piece, to the extent of having recorded it with London’s Royal Philharmonic. For another, he saw a logical match between her education and the Russian composer.

As Shimada explains it, the Russian approach to piano balances a pronounced expressiveness with a close attention to the composer’s intention, as opposed to personal interpretation. Engerer wears that style comfortably. On the one-hand, there’s her lyricism: in her hands, says Shimada, “the piano really sings.” On the other, there’s her tremendous command of the instrument’s full dynamic range. As The New York Times wrote, Engerer “is about as fiercely aggressive, massively assertive a pianist as we have today, of either sex. [She] is a pianist to be reckoned with.”

Good qualities for a piece whose orchestral writing gets so exercised that Shimada jokingly worries about them all ending together. Of course, the fireworks from soloist and orchestra are a big part of the concerto’s popularity; the other part being melodies that, typically for this composer, more than compensate for his structural flimsiness. This concerto’s most famous theme, as it turns out, never returns after the beginning of the work; thereafter, lively dances and folk tunes from France and Ukraine keep the ear engaged.

The concert begins with the episodic Lieutenant Kijé, which Prokofiev assembled from his score for a 1930s film. So there’s a Russian connection at work. And the Brahms comes in, historically anyway, because he and Tchaikovsky were both born on May 7, Brahms in 1833 and his Russian counterpart seven years later. Brahms being Brahms, the symphony is a good musical mate for the Tchaikovsky, too. No. 3 is quite subdued for long stretches — like that third movement that wooed and won this writer way back when — and Shimada saw in it a good counter for the florid concerto.

More important, Shimada explains, “both are Romantic, but in a different language.” He says, “The classical symphony form, Brahms tried to stick to as much as possible in the late Romantic era. But at the same time, because of his harmony and orchestration, he was very much a Romantic.” In sum, Brahms’ symphonies filled a distinctive middle ground between the structure-conscious Classicists and the full-blown Romantics, like Tchaikovsky, who just took off their girdles and sprawled all over the place.

Incidentally, the Tchaikovsky concerto marks another PSO debut. This is the orchestra’s first big workout for the 9-foot Steinway Model D that it purchased jointly with PCA Great Performances. New last May, the piano came just in time: Merrill’s old piano, Shimada notes, “was literally dying. The sound was really diminishing each time it was played.”

The replacement was paid for by PSO and PCA supporters. Some supporters: the price tag, Shimada says, hit close to six figures. And that’s some real sugar.

Doug Hubley can be reched at doug.hubley@worldnet.att.net