As the producer for the Gilmore Festival’s biennial radio series, I was offered a sneak peek into the world of their newest Gilmore Artist Award winner, Kirill Gerstein, a few days before his CSO debut.  The five of us in the WFMT studios listened as he transformed music from Bach’s English Suites into a tour-de-force of virtuosity and intense musical purpose.  Every note was thought out and well-placed, every contrapuntal line in the potentially labyrinthine score brought out with intelligent interpretation and refreshing clarity.

From the small stage to the large, that same virtuosity clearly impressed the Chicago Symphony’s audience at Orchestra Hall as they heard Gerstein power his way through Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto.  He and conductor Charles Dutoit reveled in Rach’s at-times super-sweet Romantic harmonies, but never crossed the fine line into being saccharine or melodramatic. Gerstein’s technically flawless performance kept the audience’s attention focused firmly on stage, a thrilling example an up-and-coming artist that undoubtedly has the chops to sustain a long and successful career.

For the second half, the CSO filled the stage to the brim for a performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11, a work immortalizing the Russian Revolution of 1905.  Its cold and bleak opening, evoking images of fog on the Moskva River, was appropriately ominous and well-paced, with the timpani cracking through the solemn string lines to dramatic effect.  As the piece grew toward a tremendously ear-splitting finale, occasional missteps (the trumpets have had better nights) were overshadowed by a few fantastic performances (the percussion section and timpanist were at the top of their game), all the while demonstrating an inexorable intensity that is unique to Shostakovich.