Persnickety personality

Neither the outstanding performance of Scarlett Brebion, as soloist on the piano; nor the resolute conducting of maestro Irwin Hoffman, permanent conductor; nor the brilliant performance of the National Symphony Orchestra (OSN) last Friday at the National Theater, at the seventh season concert, in which they performed the hybrid Symphony nº2, “The Age of Anxiety”, of the American Leonard Bernstein; nor the program notes by Jacques Sagot, reconciled me with the piece that, with certainty, the OSN performed for first time.

Bernstein’s work, whose eclectic formal framework places it between a concert for piano and orchestra and a concerted symphony, premiered in 1949, and its subtitle comes from the title of the homonymous poem by the English author W.H. Auden. (...)

Brebion’s pianistic achievement was as masterful as was required by the score; the refined sonority, the exact or syncopated metric, graceful fingering and clear phrasing. Her brilliant performance harvested the listeners' cheers. (...)