San Diego’s Chopin Bicentennial Celebration shifted into higher gear Friday (Feb. 12) when Garrick Ohlsson performed Chopin’s F Minor Piano Concerto, Op. 21, and the “Andante spianato et grand polonaise brillante,” Op. 22, with the San Diego Symphony. Last month Ohlsson inaugurated San Diego’s two-year Chopin marathon with a solo recital for the La Jolla Music Society at Sherwood Auditorium, an evening in which the brilliant and the perfunctory nestled perplexingly cheek by jowl.

But Ohlsson was in splendid form Friday, giving these familiar staples consistently fresh and invigorating attention as well as stylistic acuity of the highest degree. From the diaphanous but perfectly even arabesques of the “Andante spianato,” to the crisp rhythmic inflections of the polonaise, he unleashed that unending melodic exuberance that sets Chopin apart from his Romantic contemporaries.

Ohlsson’s muscular technique and his commanding sound are ideal for concertos by the hefty late Romantics like Rachmaninoff and the aggressive 20th-century modernists like Prokofiev, and I am always gratified to see how he channels that strength into Chopin’s more pliant and subtle textures with such success. The result is a gleaming melodic line that equals the orchestra’s might, yet retains a supple edge.

He filled the opening movement of the F Minor Concerto with sweet lyrical expositions, and Music Director Jahja Ling attentively bent the orchestra to accommodate his elegant rubato and varied dynamic shadings. Unlike the piano concertos of Beethoven, where the orchestra engages in equal combat with the soloist, Chopin gives the orchestra a decidedly secondary function. Like the back-up singers in a Las Vegas show, they are a necessary part of the tableau, but they’re clearly not the main attraction.

However, the fleeting duets between the Ohlsson and Principal Bassoon Valentin Martchev shimmered gracefully, even though the rest of the orchestra went its own merry way. Both orchestra and soloist captured the fire of the bold, mazurka-like finale, after which Ohlsson returned to the stage for an encore, another virtuosic early Chopin gem, the Waltz in E-flat Major, Op. 18.

Pairing Chopin with Jean Sibelius proved an ideal match, for while Chopin was profligate with his melodic invention, in his Second Symphony Sibelius was the epitome of concision, growing an entire symphony from a few simple motifs. Ling and the orchestra gave the Second Symphony its due and then some, heroic when called for, but wonderfully austere when the Nordic wind cooled the composer’s ardor. Ling’s empathy for Sibelius was evident at every turn. Conducting from memory, he constructed a vast temple of tone, drawing together with fervor and clarity all the themes in their lustrous unity.

I left this performance with a renewed appreciation for Sibelius’ depth and structural majesty. For a work written in 1900, the orchestration is refreshingly innovative and canny, for example, the opening of the second movement where an expansive, hushed ostinato in the low strings finally invites a wailing theme from the bassoons, accented only by a brush of timpani. He uses dark woodwind choirs freely, not unlike Bruckner, whom he admired greatly, but Sibelius does not get bogged down in Bruckner’s turgid ruminations. His aesthetic is far too disciplined for that.

In the middle of the last century, the apologists for 12-tone music heaped scorn on Sibelius, partly because the public loved his music and never embraced the Schoenberg school, but mainly because he could not renounce tonality. (Neither did Gustav Mahler, but as an Austrian he was given a free pass.) In 1955, the influential French conductor and Anton Weber pupil René Liebowitz published a pamphlet whose title described Sibelius as the “worst composer in the world.”

Now that we understand the 12-tone approach to composition as a mere cul-du-sac in the progression of western music—as opposed to its supposed acme—Sibelius’ canon of seven symphonies stands quite tall. In their own way they point to the static, multi-hued tone poems of Messiaen and the tautly constructed symphonies of Shostakovich.

In the Symphony’s program book, maestro Ling has promised to give us more Sibelius on a regular regimen. I for one hope he keeps his word.

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