Music : Symphony Turns a Spotlight on Beethoven

In a case of accidentally auspicious timing, the Japan America Symphony devoted Saturday’s concert at the Japan America Theatre to the music of Beethoven, whose public stock seems to have gone up of late due to the film “Immortal Beloved.” Apart from the film’s controversial shuffling of facts, it has succeeded in making Beethoven again a household name--even the stuff of magazine covers.

By and large, what the nearly full house this night heard was a kinder, gentler Beethoven than the brooding sort on the big screen. In the composer’s first two piano concertos, which occupied the lion’s share of the program, one can still detect a Mozartean connection, with a Romantic spirit mustering energy to break free of its Classical moorings.

Fervor, precision and delicacy are required in this repertory, and conductor Heiichiro Ohyama suited the occasion well, marshaling the gifted, equal-opportunity ensemble with a sure hand, as has become an expectation. Crisply delineated contours and intelligent dynamics were the hallmarks of Ohyama’s approach.

Out front, respected Japanese pianist Takahiro Sonoda played like a master and without excessive hubris. He demonstrated how heroism in interpretation can also entail a profound, self-effacing respect for the score. Such a task requires a delicate balance with music this patently virtuosic.

Opening the program with what proved to be a misleading indication of what was to come, the dark robust drive of the “Coriolan” Overture portrayed a more turbulent dimension of Beethoven’s work.

In Beethoven’s debut Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat (the composer’s first concertos were published in an order the reverse of their completion), Sonoda captured the proper air of guarded tranquillity on the almost ethereal Adagio, with its variations on a circle of simply stated chords, and finished on the final movement’s gregarious mood.

Beethoven’s second concerto, No. 1 in C, is another kind-spirited major-key opus, yet more of a technical piece de resistance for the soloist. By the time the orchestra circled in on the bounding, energetic lark that is the Rondo, the general impression was one of a thematically cogent evening of music-making.