Benjamin Hochman | Pianist

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It was said that Felix Mendelssohn played the piano with such lightness and fluidity it had the effect of trivializing his own music, a reputation his works for piano have always struggled to escape.

Although it would be hard to imagine anyone playing Mendelssohn’s “Concerto No. 1 in G Minor for Piano and Orchestra,” Op.25, with more liquid gracefulness than did Benjamin Hochman in his performance with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra on Thursday night, the effect was anything but afternoon salon entertainment.

Not yet 30, Hochman came on stage with an air of elegant dignity that led one to expect the same from his playing. He did not disappoint.

The first two movements perfectly fit Albert Einstein’s description of Mendelssohn as a Romantic classicist. Hochman played them with both luminous transparency and as much narrative depth as could be pulled from them.

His relationship with the orchestra, conducted by Lucas Richman, was indeed more collaborative and mere show-offishness.

But then, the third movement was pure froth, played at such speed that Hochman could have whipped cream. The effect of that was more exhilarating than the substance of it deserved.

With such technical virtuosity and intuitive sense of what the meaning of the music could be, one would love to hear him play music by Brahms, Prokofiev or Shostakovich.

The concert opened with Richman’s conducting of the KSO in an entirely lovely performance of “Symphony No.16 in B Flat Major,” by Joseph Haydn, the creator of the symphonic form.

After intermission, the music moved from the transparency of the first half’s works to thicker, more dramatic music with vigorous performances of Richard Wagner’s “Prelude and Liebstod” from his opera “Tristan and Isolde,” along with the “Suite” of music from Richard Strauss’ opera “Der Rosenkavalier.”

Although the music clearly showed the transformation from the classical purity of Haydn to the denser melodrama of Romantic operas, with Mendelssohn in between, the two Richards’ pieces were delivered by Richman and the KSO with equal musical proficiency.

Bravo.

Harold Duckett is a freelance contributor to the News Sentinel