With a secure place among the foremost musical artists of the world, French pianist Hélène Grimaud, 44, is unique in her intensity — both in her playing and in her nature. When she talks about the Brahms concerto she will perform with the San Francisco Symphony Feb. 5-7, her words tumble in self-interrupting cascade:
"It is dramatic, powerful, with unmasked feelings, honesty, irresistible ..."
It's hard to believe what sense of presence this 1858 work which Grimaud has performed throughout her illustrious 30-year-long career still has in her thoughts. She speaks of "the noble and tender mystical second movement" of the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1, believed to be a musical memorial for Robert Schumann, who had just committed suicide at the time of the concerto's composition, and the emotion is palpable in Grimaud's voice.
Intensity has always been her hallmark, and Grimaud is well aware of it: "My father came from a background of Sephardic Jews in Africa, and my mother's ancestors were Jewish Berbers from Corsica. As a child, I was often agitated," she has said in a New York Times interview.
Her recording of both Brahms concertos has just been released by Deutsche Grammophon, and she speaks of the two works as a mother would of her two children, unable to choose between them. Grimaud describes the Second Piano Concerto as a mature work, of "transcending resignation, acceptance how life could have been but wasn't."
In a strange twist of events, while Michael Tilson Thomas will not conduct Grimaud's concerts in Davies Symphony Hall, MTT was "borrowed" by Philadelphia Orchestra to lead the same concerto with Grimaud a few weeks ago when that orchestra's new young music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, became ill.
Another young maestro gaining fame, Lionel Bringuier, will conduct the program in Davies, including Ravel's La valse and Henri Dutilleux's Métaboles.
The 27-year-old Frenchman has served six years as resident conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and he is now Music Director designate of the Tonhalle Orchestra in Zürich.
Dutilleux, who died in Paris last year, wrote Métaboles 50 years ago. The title, a form of metamorphosis, is given to a work with unusual instrumentation, including two temple blocks, snare drum, tom-toms, bass drum, small suspended cymbals, aC hinese cymbal, tam-tams, crash cymbals, triangle, cowbell, xylophone, glockenspiel, celesta, harp, and strings.