Classical Concert Reviews Cinci

@cincysymphony continued its 2025-26 season with an exciting, yet interesting, program pairing an early piano concerto by Beethoven with the U.S. premiere of a new score by one of the world’s most well-known Icelandic composers.
Music director Cristian Mǎcelaru and the orchestra opened with an invigorating performance of Johannes Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture (1880), one of his most joyful orchestral works seldom performed by most of the world’s major orchestras.
Piano soloist Daniil Trifonov, making a welcome return appearance to Cincinnati, then joined the orchestra for a sprightly, insightful reading of Ludwig Van Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (though actually the first one he wrote, beginning in 1787).
Having seen Triifonov play on at least two prior occasions, his interpretations of Romantic repertoire may be divisive to some audiences, but I found his Beethoven this evening to be quite pleasing to the ear. There were, however, occasional virtuosic flashes that went slightly against the more intimate style that was being achieved in the first and third movements, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. Triifonov provided a spectacular encore in Levante, a work by Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov written in 2004 and based on a chorus from his larger-scale La Pasión según San Marcos.
Daniel Bjarnason’s newest orchestral score, I Want to Be Alive, draws inspiration from the myths of Echo, Narcissus and Pandora’s Box, but cast in a more contemporary light meant to invite conversation about how technological advances such as AI can impact the world in good and bad ways. Mǎcelaru and the CSO turned in a spectacular U.S. premiere performance of this unique work, which calls to mind late Shostakovich, John Williams and Krzystof Penderecki. One of its most unique aspects was the inclusion of percussion instruments such as clay flower pots, almglocken, nipple gong and a battery of tuned gongs.
While some of Bjarnason’s music can rightly be considered an acquired taste for audiences, I believe many orchestras will grow to embrace this new work wholeheartedly. Bravi tutti!