Nothing happened in a hurry at Zellerbach Hall.
In the first of two performances over the weekend at the Berkeley venue on Saturday, Oct. 18, London’s Philharmonia Orchestra — with principal conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali on the podium — took its time. Tempos were repeatedly slow, with palpable rubatos and ritards. Even the two encores lingered, albeit in different ways.
All this patient musical exposition yielded contrasting results — a radiant performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, “Emperor,” with Vikingur Ólafsson as soloist, followed after intermission by an unpersuasive reading of Jean Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5. A slow-to-develop Bay Area premiere by Mexican-born composer Gabriela Ortiz occupied the middle of the program.
Ólafsson, the New York-based virtuoso and a 2025-26 Cal Performances artist in residence, unveiled one fresh insight after another in the concerto. That’s saying a lot given a work as familiar as this one.
In the long first movement, which involves plenty of big chords, martial flourishes, and double octave-spanning marches up and down the keyboard, the pianist married dynamism and delicacy, powerful attacks and a searching lyricism. Perhaps most strikingly, his left hand opened up the midrange melodic and harmonic material that can easily get buried in the demanding chromatic runs and filigrees that keep the right hand busy.
The discoveries continued in the Adagio, which unfurled with breathless, focused concentration on every measure, the orchestra and soloist in sweet accord. Ólafsson’s whirring trills hovered with hummingbird lightness.
The tension-tightening entry into the final movement was stretched out for maximum dramatic effect. As the piece charged ahead, Ólafsson voiced phrases in unexpected, amusingly buoyant ways. The closing passage was charged with full-throttle momentum,
Rangy, his height emphasized by the black bow tie he wore atop his long torso, Ólafsson gave a full-body performance, crouched low over the keyboard or finishing off fortissimos with a jolt that sent his hands flying up.
Ortiz’s Si el oxígeno fuera verde (If oxygen were green), dedicated to a late friend whose chosen name translates as “Chlorophyll,” is a kind of eco-tone poem in four continuous movements. The Philharmonia’s impressive high string sections led the way, with a long oscillating ostinato suggesting what the composer calls “the fragile green murmur of life.”
As the woodwinds and brasses joined in, the music gradually gained heft and heaving surges reminiscent of Claude Debussy’s La mer. A xylophone and cymbals pitched in as the work built to a bright and jazz-inflected “dance of chlorophyll” climax. Alluring as it was at times, color predominated over absorbing musical content.
Rouvali’s pacing of the Sibelius symphony did this already long-winded work no favors.
Early on, some entrances were blurry, while the horns sounded muddled. The middle movement proved to be the strongest of the three, with some intriguing phrasing and one brawny, expansive passage. But as the symphony ascended toward its drawn-out final chords, the musical narrative had gone slack.
Even the hall’s acoustics shared in the evening’s unhurried spirit. The new Meyer Sound system for Zellerbach Hall, developed and installed over the summer, made its full-orchestra debut Saturday, earning praise from Ólafsson onstage. Interviewed at intermission, John and Helen Meyer described the use of speakers, microphones, and computer processing as a tool not to amplify the natural sound but rather to tune the hall itself with an “invisible sonic architecture.”
Ólafsson, a Bach specialist, played the composer’s B-minor Prelude, arranged by Alexander Siloti, as a quietly transporting encore. Once again, a yearning left-hand melody sang out beneath shimmering treble figures.
The orchestra added Shostakovich’s swaying “Cherymoushki Waltz,” a work with a few too many turns around the dance floor, to end the night.
