Joe DiMonte

Crowd in Shanghai didn't want PSO to stop the music
Monday, May 18, 2009
By Andrew Druckenbrod, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Paul Andreu ArchitectsThe Oriental Arts Center is an architectural marvel, with a flower-blossom shape when viewed from above and tall glass-panel walls seen from below.Editor's note: This is part of a series of reviews and reports by classical music critic Andrew Druckenbrod, who is on tour with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in China and Taiwan.


SHANGHAI -- The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra was held in the warm embrace of a city Saturday night, when the people of Shanghai wouldn't let the orchestra off the stage.


In a concert at the spectacular Oriental Arts Center, conductor Manfred Honeck had just finished the second of two planned encores, Grieg's "Morning Mood" from "Peer Gynt," when the audience began robust and rhythmic clapping to demand another. Mr. Honeck made several curtain calls and the musicians took to their feet several times in acknowledgment, but it was not enough. The crowd would not allow the PSO to leave unless it got another.

Luckily, PSO librarian JoAnn Vosburgh had packed all of the tour's encores into the musicians' onstage folders, because Mr. Honeck eventually gave in to the crowd's demands for more. To the audience's delight, the orchestra tore into Brahms' "Hungarian Dance No. 5." Even missing some wind musicians, who weren't needed for that night's program, the piece brought the house down. Mr. Honeck egged the audience members on, asking them to clap with the orchestra.

The fuse that ignited this audience explosion was Mr. Honeck's incendiary interpretation of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7. As has been the case throughout the tour, the energy and drama he drew out of the orchestra was irresistible. And again, it made up for lackluster soloing in Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5, "Emperor," by pianist Orion Weiss.

Luckily for the PSO, the Beethoven Symphony ended the program, and the excitement of the musicians in tutti and solos left the audience wanting more.

Read more: Crowd in Shanghai didn't want PSO to stop the music

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