Pianist Orion Weiss Returns with Musical Humor
David Lewellen
PUBLISHED
Tagged Under: Classics, piano, Soloist
A few years ago, when pianist Orion Weiss was scrolling through Spotify for music to play for his infant son, he paused over Ernst von Dohnányi’s “Variations on a Nursery Tune.” He remembered that the piece was based on the melody we know as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” so he clicked Play.
His son loved it — his son loved everything — but Weiss said, “I was blown away by the humor, the orchestration, the beauty, the way he had made such a story out of this funny kernel.” And after one thing led to another, Weiss and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra will both perform the piece this week.
It opens with a dramatic, stormy passage for orchestra — but after a pause, the piano enters with the nursery tune that everyone in the audience knows. “It sounds like it’s going to be a Brahms concerto,” Weiss said. “It’s the best kind of musical humor.”
Dohnányi, a Hungarian composer of the early 20th century, sprinkled his variations with references to other eminent composers. “The audience should laugh throughout,” Weiss said. “But the piece does go through the whole range of emotions. There’s surprise, depth, humor, virtuosity. I hope people laugh at the end, too, because it’s so full of life.”
Among Weiss’s highlights are the Viennese waltz variation, the fugue at the end, and the preceding passage where the piano produces what Weiss describes as a blurry effect by holding down the sustain pedal through clashing harmonies while chimes sound from the percussion section. “It’s like hearing church bells underwater or from a distance,” he said. “There’s so many great moments to look forward to.”
Weiss grew up in the Cleveland suburbs, studied with Emanuel Ax at Juilliard, and began playing professionally while he was still in school. He had to be careful not to miss too many classes, but he said that Ax helped provide “a stable foundation to begin a career, because I knew that I could always go back to him and talk.”
His schedule in recent years has tilted more towards chamber music, but not by design. “I just answer the phone,” he said. “But everything is connected.” His recent cycle of performing all ten Beethoven violin sonatas in partnership with James Ehnes, for instance, has enhanced his understanding of the piano concertos. And even as a soloist, there are moments in the Dohnányi when he is essentially accompanying the orchestra.
“There is tricky stuff between the conductor and the pianist,” he said. “I’m glad to be doing it with Ken-David Masur.” The MSO’s music director and Weiss have collaborated before, and although Weiss has played with the MSO in the past, the upcoming concerts will be his first in the Bradley Symphony Center. This weekend marks the first time the MSO has ever performed the Dohnányi piece on a Classics subscription concert, and it will be the soloist’s first time playing it for a concert audience.
Weiss tries to maintain a balanced diet of composers, too. He described a parlor game of “throw the composer from the boat” — basically the opposite of the desert island exercise, in which participants eliminate composers one by one. “It’s a very painful game,” he said. “You usually wind up with Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart in the boat, but thank goodness we live in a wonderful world with Dohnányi and Grieg and Piazzola and all the others. I do everything I can.”
Themes with variations are a common musical form, but few themes are this universally recognized. “Bring your kids,” Weiss said. “Let them hear the tune and recognize what an orchestra can do with something as simple as that. I can’t wait.”
