Sarasota Orchestra gets ‘Romantic’ for Masterworks concert

The Sarasota Orchestra is getting into the spirit of Valentine’s Day with its Masterworks concert “A Romantic Affair,” which brings back guest conductor Peter Oundjian and marks the Sarasota debut of pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii.

The concerts at Neel Performing Arts Center on Feb. 2 and the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall Feb. 3-5 feature two pieces by Brahms and the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2. Both are considered among the greatest composers of the Romantic period, which was marked by soaring melodies and expanding orchestras.

The orchestra will open the program with Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 4, and close with his Symphony No. 1, which Oundjian said “is just genius.”

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“He worked more than 12 years to get it to the point where he was satisfied with it. You wonder what he threw away and how good that would have sounded,” he said.

Oundjian first conducted it as a student at the Juilliard School, where he had a minor in conducting. Famed Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan “came to do master classes for five conducting students and asked me to conduct. He asked if I had some experience and I stupidly said yes.”

But he learned valuable lessons from von Karajan.

“The idea was that less can be more. He knew I hadn’t studied it too much and he stood about two feet from me the whole time,” Oundjian said. He has studied it much more since then.

He also is looking forward to working with Tsujii for the first time.

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“I have always wanted to make music with him. He is astonishing, he truly is,” Oundjian said. “I have a sort of history with Japanese musicians and I’m very thrilled, frankly honored, to be on the stage with him in one of the most beautiful pieces ever written. It is a great piece. For people who think they don’t like classical music or think they might not like, they will find it is beautiful on every level.”

Tsjuii, who has been described as the “definition of virtuosity,” has been blind from birth. He won the joint Gold Medal at the 2009 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and has gone on to a career that includes performances with some of the world’s leading orchestras and conductors, including the Mariinsky Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic, Tokyo symphony, Seattle Symphony and Baltimore Symphony.

Tsjuii won the Van Cliburn Competition by playing the Rachmaninoff concert and in an email he said it changed his life, just as it became a turning point for the composer after the perceived failure of his First Symphony.

"It is a stretch to superimpose Rachmaninoff's life and my own, but they may be the same in the sense that the concerto was a turning point in my life,” Tsjuii wrote. “When I play this piece, I feel a strange connection with it."

‘A Romantic Affair’

Sarasota Orchestra with guest conductor Peter Oundjian and pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii. 7:30 p.m. Feb. 2, Neel Performing Arts Center, 5840 26th St., West, Bradenton. 7:30 p.m. Feb. 3-4 and 2:30 p.m. Feb. 5, Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, 777 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. Tickets are $37-$99. 941-953-3434; sarasotaorchestra.org

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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota Orchestra plays Romantic era favorites in Masterworks series