Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra welcomes return of Russian pianist Yulianna Avdeeva

There’s nothing like virtuosity for excitement, but artistry calls for more. Russian pianist Yulianna Avdeeva, for example, has been praised for her “ability to let the music breathe.” She is able to achieve the feeling of spontaneity in the emotional world she’s conjuring when she plays great music.

Avdeeva is returning to Heinz Hall this week for the fourth time since 2013 to play one of the great Romantic piano concertos with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. She’ll show more of her artistic range at an extra concert on Saturday evening.

Sir Mark Elder will conduct Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra concerts on March 6 and 8 at Pittsburgh’s Heinz Hall. The program is Hector Berlioz’ “King Lear” Overture, Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto with Yulianna Avdeeva as soloist, and Jean Sibelius’ Symphony No. 1. Avdeeva also will play a “360” concert with members of the orchestra on March 7 at Heinz Hall.

Grieg was a young man when he tasted the first of many successes in his long career. A few years later, when he was 25 and on vacation with his wife, he wrote his only Piano Concerto.

“It is one of the real Romantic concertos,” says Avdeeva. She added it to her repertoire six or seven years ago and is glad she did.

“For me it is a very personal reflection of the state of his soul and mind,” she says. “It is wonderfully authentic, and uses some Norwegian dances and rhythms, especially in the last movement. The slow movement is for me one of the most beautiful pieces which exists in any music.”

In the round

Her Saturday concert will let audience members hear the widest scope of her artistry she’s yet displayed at Heinz Hall. It’s called a “360” concert because the musicians perform at the center of the stage with the audience all around them on stage.

Avdeeva and members of the symphony will play music ranging from the 18th to the 20th centuries, including Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Antonin Dvorak and Sergei Prokofiev.

She’ll team up with symphony principal clarinet Michael Rusinek for the rarely heard Clarinet Sonata by Mieczyslaw Weinberg. The Polish pianist and prolific composer spent most of his life in the Soviet Union, where he enjoyed professional and personal friendship with Dmitri Shostakovich. Weinberg’s music was neglected for a long time, but is being rediscovered in recent years.

Avdeeva was turned on to Weinberg through her collaborations with the great Russian violinist Gideon Kremer. Just last year they released a CD of Weinberg’s chamber music on the Deutsche Grammophon label.

“Weinberg has become a very special composer for me,” she says. “I’m preparing special projects for next year with some of his piano music. I’m very glad that we will perform the Clarinet Sonata because it’s a beautiful, beautiful piece.”

As a special treat, Avdeeva will close the 360 concert with the finale of Frederic Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2. The pianist won the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 2010 and performed this entire concerto with the symphony in 2017. The 360 performance will use the original orchestration for strings only, which Chopin premiered at a performance in 1830 in his apartment in Warsaw, shortly before he left his homeland and spent most of the rest of his life in Paris.