Russian National Orchestra wows adoring crowd

The Russian National Orchestra served up an afternoon of passionate Russian soul to an adoring crowd Sunday; even the rare winter sunshine was not enough to make anyone regret their time spent indoors.

Not when Vladimir Jurowski was on the Benaroya Hall podium, and Stephen Hough on the piano bench. The former, a conductor in his mid-30s based in London, is an often-flamboyant maestro who drew nonstop intensity from his players; the latter, a quirky British pianist who stepped onto the stage with fire-engine-red shoes, stunned listeners with his total mastery of the keyboard and his unique spin on the music.

The all-Russian program of Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky, presenting some of the best-loved gems by both composers, would have been a draw in itself. The Rachmaninoff "Isle of the Dead," a somber piece that sounds merely gloomy in lesser hands, assumed a surging urgency as the Moscow-based musicians dug into the score.

Five Seattle-based players joined the orchestra as extras or replacements for ill players: violinists Misha Shmidt, Michael Miropolsky, Leonid Keylin and Natalya Bazhanov, and harpist Valerie Muzzolini.

Tchaikovsky's familiar "Pathétique" Symphony was given a mercurial reading by the Russians and Jurowski, whose expressive hands and incisive stick technique can make the orchestra turn on a dime — suddenly charging forward or dying away, producing piercing climactic passages with ear-shattering brass, or the most exquisite fades into silence.

Occasional disagreements in wind-section intonation seem utterly minor, as the ear is seduced by the quality of the sound and all the interesting things Jurowski is doing with it.

Hough's performance of the Rachmaninoff "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini" was full of tremendous vitality: spiky attacks, crisp figures and a dizzying technique that would be hard to match for sheer firepower. He's a pianist you want to hear again and again.

Hough's encore was Mompou's "Young Girls in the Garden."

Melinda Bargreen: mbargreen@seattletimes.com