Commentary: Evgeny Kissin, Víkingur Ólafsson close Symphony Center Presents season; Cliburn winner opens 2025-26 series

By Lawrence B. Johnson

In elegant, illuminating and distinctly individual fashion, Emanuel Ax’s recent recital at Orchestra Hall exemplified everything that is marvelous about the annual piano series under the banner of Symphony Center Presents. Season after season, this longstanding treasure of a series brings to Chicago the greatest pianists of our time. Ax has been part of that parade for quite a while; likewise, Evgeny Kissin, who is next up May 11.

Where Kissin’s program is somewhat offbeat in its division between Chopin (two Nocturnes and Scherzo No. 4 in E) and Shostakovich (Sonata No. 2 and two of the Prelude and Fugues from Op. 87), Ax’s recital April 27 hovered at the core of German repertoire, though with a couple of small twists.

While every piano buff may know Beethoven’s Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 27, No. 2 (“Moonlight”) practically by heart, who would recognize any eight bars of its companion piece, Op. 27, No. 1? Surely at some point in the 50 years I’ve been reviewing concerts, I’ve encountered the “other” Op. 27 Sonata in a live performance. But honestly, I can’t bring such a meeting to mind. Ax played both pieces, and it was a charming – perhaps the correct word is fantastical – match.

Beethoven, in this early departure from the precepts of classical sonata form, designated both of the Op. 27 sonatas as “quasi-fantasies” – rather like free improvisations – whose several episodes are to be played with only the barest pause between them, as if in a single movement. It’s also worth noting that Op. 27, No. 1, is cast in E-flat major, sometimes referred to as Beethoven’s “heroic” key, and indeed Ax captured the bristling spirit that in part distinguishes this sonata from its darker, more famous companion. And his account of the “Moonlight” was liquid poetry, as fluent in its ruminative opening as it was agile and deft in the headlong finale.

Between the two Beethoven sonatas, Ax inserted a modern fantasy with its own ties to Beethoven – John Corigliano’s “Fantasia on an Ostinato.” An ostinato, in musical parlance, is a recurring (or obstinate) bass line that typically anchors freewheeling invention above it. Here, the inventive part was Corigliano’s minimalist fireworks over his deconstruction of a famous ostinato by Beethoven: the rhythmic underpinning of the second movement of the Seventh Symphony. In a wise and helpful preface to his performance, Ax explained how it all worked and played Beethoven’s original bass line intact. Then he plunged into a shimmering turn through Corigliano’s “Fantasia” that won a great ovation.

The second half of Ax’s recital was all Schumman, with a bit of unplanned drama. A short distance into the Arabesque in C, Op. 18, a piano wire snapped. Where a similarly importuned violinist would have replaced the broken string, here the only fix was to replace the piano. The wounded instrument was lowered to the basement on a lift that also brought up a new one in perfect fitness. Ax restarted what proved to be a radiant, untroubled reading of the popular Arabesque.

But the main Schumann event, in keeping with the afternoon’s theme, was a probing and lyrical performance of the grand, three-movement Fantasy in C, Op. 17. To my mind, Ax’s eloquent exploration of the slow movement, broadly conceived and minutely and expressively detailed, was the program’s peak moment. His altogether burnished, idiomatic playing of the Fantasy provided a potent reminder of Ax’s lofty place in the pianistic firmament.

After Kissin’s impending visit, this season’s piano series closes with a recital by Víkingur Ólafsson on June 8. Along with music of Bach, the Icelandic pianist will play two Beethoven sonatas (No. 27 in E minor, Op. 90 and No. 30 in E major, Op. 109) and Schubert’s Sonata in E minor, D. 566.

The 2025-26 piano series opens Oct. 19 with Yunchan Lim, the South Korean winner of the 2022 Van Cliburn Competition, playing Webern’s Variations, Op. 27, and Bach’s complete “Goldberg” Variations. Lim also returns in December to make his CSO subscription concert debut in Schumann’s Piano Concerto with CSO music director-designate Klaus Mäkelä conducting.

Italian pianist Beatrice Rana follows Nov. 2 with a program of Debussy’s Etudes, Book II; a suite from Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker,” Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 6 and selections from Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet.”  Rana made her debut with the CSO and conductor Lahav Shani in 2023 playing Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. In an unforgettable encore, she and Shani played a four-hand arrangement of the Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy from Tchaikovsky’s ballet “The Nutcracker.”

The Japanese pianist Hayato Sumino makes his Chicago series debut Nov. 16 with a wide-ranging program that highlights his art as classical performer, innovative composer and improvisational talent performing works by Chopin, Bach and Ravel, as well as some of his own music.

The New Year portion of the piano series begins Jan. 25, 2026, with Russian-American pianist Kirill Gerstein playing Liszt’s “Après une lecture du Dante” from the composer’s “Années de pèlerinage, Deuxième année, Italie,” and Brahms’ Sonata No. 3 in F Minor. Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin follows Feb. 22, 2026, with a novel pairing of Charles Ives’ “Concord” Sonata and Scriabin’s Sonata No. 3, along with Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, Op. 12.

British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor returns to the series March 8, 2026, with a program that includes Schubert’s “Wanderer” Fantasy and Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata in addition to works by Schumann and Scriabin.

Evgeny Kissin also is back for the piano series May 17, 2026, with a program featuring Chopin mazurkas, Schumann’s “Kreisleriana,” Op. 16, and Beethoven’s Sonata No. 7 in D Major, Op. 10, No. 3, along with Nikolai Myaskovsky’s rarely played but famously difficult Sonata No. 2, Op. 13, written in 1912. (In April 2026, Kissin joins the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and conductor Andrey Boreyko for the Rimsky-Korsakov Piano Concerto, the Scriabin Piano Concerto and Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 1, all on one program.)

Capping the piano series June 7, 2026, is Urbana, Ill., native Conrad Tao’s tapestry of Americana, keyboard music of Gershwin as well as jazz greats Art Tatum and Billy Strayhorn, all contrasted with selections from European contemporaries Schoenberg, Debussy and Rachmaninoff. Tao, who is a composer himself, will offer onstage program notes to introduce many of the pieces and bring audiences closer to music shaped by cross-pollination and exploration in the early part of the 20th century.