By Lawrence Toppman
When I started going to concerts back in the LP era, a college friend could offer no higher praise than this afterward: “Man, I would buy a record of that!” I thought of him Saturday at Belk Theater after listening to pianist Michelle Cann with the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra. I would absolutely have bought a recording of her three-part performance, which she’ll never repeat exactly – and, I’m sure, wouldn’t want to.
Her renditions of Florence Price’s Concerto in One Movement and George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” alternately pyrotechnic and introspective, won me over at once. She sped time up in a happy frenzy, slowed it down almost but not quite to the breaking point, twisted it sideways to accommodate a bit of bluesy note-bending. But her encore!
It began as Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C-sharp Minor, with the three monumentally solemn chords the composer himself soon wearied of playing again and again. Suddenly, the quicksilver spirit of Art Tatum seemed to take over Cann’s body. Her fingers swooped and skittered all over the keyboard, sometimes linking back to Rachmaninov and sometimes rocking us with jazzy improvisations.
Later in the concert, guest conductor Thomas Wilkins took the microphone to tell us he’d discovered her at 14 and made her a protégé. And their collaboration had a sensitivity, flexibility and joie de vivre he showed only when he accompanied her.
He opened with Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” and closed with Maurice Ravel’s second suite from the ballet “Daphnis and Chloe.” They bore the same stamp: perky, no-nonsense excitement achieved through rapid tempos and hard-driven climaxes.
But the relaxed charm of “Paris” came through only in the brass solos (led by trumpeter Alex Wilborn, who bent notes of his own), and the opening “Daybreak” section of “Daphnis” brought not the dawn of a lazy summer day but the nippy air of a morning in early spring. Ravel’s sensual languor didn’t emerge until the woodwinds gently reminded us this was a love story
The piano pieces conveyed a wider range of moods. Cann’s playing of Gershwin’s chestnut, which had its 100th birthday three weeks ago, echoed the dictionary definition of “rhapsody” as “an effusively enthusiastic or ecstatic expression of feeling.” What could have gone over the top never did, either here or in the Liszt-like first section of Price’s concerto. (Despite its title, it consists of three clearly defined segments anyone else would call “movements.”)
Cann has made a specialty of this work, giving the New York and Philadelphia premieres of the rediscovered concerto and winning a 2023 Grammy award for her recording of it. The first section has a fiery but hollow grandeur, yet Price doesn’t show a strong personal voice until the contemplative middle portion. There the pianist has an easeful duet with the oboe and meditates on what could almost be a hymn tune before breaking into a rollicking finale.
Cann made that transition seamlessly, all but dancing on the piano bench before taking a justified ovation and striding through her audacious encore. She battered the keyboard so vigorously (speaking of Liszt) that a piano technician spent the entire intermission re-tuning the instrument. She must have succeeded, as “Rhapsody in Blue” sounded fine.
Pictured: Michelle Cann/Instagram