Mostly Mozart: Pianist Kirill Gerstein

The high point of Wednesday night's Mostly Mozart concert was actually an encore performed just before the intermission. It was the finest moment of yet another splendid evening in the soon to conclude concert series.

Having just performed Schumann's piano concerto to raucous applause, pianist Kirill Gerstein returned to the David Geffen Hall stage and played a snippet of a piece that I confess to never having even heard of. (I was gratified to learn later on that other critics I spoke with were also unfamiliar with it.) The work in question is a piece of juvenilia: a piano concerto written by Robert Schumann's wife, Clara, just after her fourteenth birthday. The Russian-born performer explained that it was said to be the first work that her eventual husband had ever orchestrated, acting on behalf of the star pupil with whom he would elope once she had reached her majority.

The part of the concerto which Gerstein essayed was a lovely duet between piano and cello. That latter part was played by Festival lead cellist, Ilya Finkelshteyn. The duo made a wonderful pairing that charmed all in attendance. It also offered a striking link among three famous figures of the classical romantic movement in music: Robert and Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms.

As many classical music fans know, Robert Schumann was almost the stereotype of the troubled artistic genius. Prolifically brilliant, witty and generous when he was manic, he was despondent, suicidal and even psychotic when he was depressed. Institutionalized before his youthful death, Schumann had left the young genius Johannes Brahms as the ward of his widow, Clara.

Whether her husband's fascination with the attractive young composer he had discovered was platonic and whether his musical heir ever consummated his intense relationship with his wife is a matter of much speculation. What we do know is that Clara made it the work of her remaining years to champion the music of both men in her role as a virtuoso performer and interpreter.

Thus, the encore served as a further connection between the three figures in a concert program that included Brahms' Variation on a Theme of Schumann, Schumann's Piano Concerto and Brahms' beloved First Symphony. Each was well-served, albeit in different ways.

Gerstein is not a pianist who is fond of needless pounding of the keys. Ironically, according to the testimony of Clara herself, Brahms himself was guilty of this. Regardless, Gerstein's take on the Brahms' Schumann Variations was subtle and affecting, and he displayed this understated style again in the Schumann concerto.

Then, after intermission, festival Music Director Louis Langree led the Orchestra in a driving and unabashed performance of the Brahms First Symphony. What it may have lacked in perfection of attacks, it more than made up in vigor and power.

All in all, it was a further reminder of how special the Mozart Festival is and how much it is to be prized as it features the vest best music ever written played by absolutely first-rate interpreters.

The Mostly Mozart Festival continues through August 20 at Lincoln Center. For information and tickets, call 212-721-6500 or visit http://www.lincolncenter.org/mostly-mozart