Acclaimed pianist Phillip Bush performs Beethoven with the USC Symphony Orchestra

When Phillip Bush settled in Columbia several years ago the city got a gift of regular concerts by the pianist. He’ll make his first appearance with the University of South Carolina Symphony Orchestra Tuesday, Oct. 18 performing Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Concert No. 4 in G major. This also marks his debut performing with an orchestra in South Carolina

The concert at the Koger Center will also have another guest - Italian conductor and composer Nino Lepore leading the orchestra in “Capriccio Italien” by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and the Beethoven. The orchestra honors the 100th anniversary of Gian Carlo Menotti’s birth with a concert version of his opera “The Telephone” which will be conducted by music director Donald Portnoy.

For many years Bush was a member of the Steve Reich and Philip Glass ensembles and has appeared as soloist with Osaka (Japan) Century Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony and Houston Symphony. Bush has performed at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and New York's Bargemusic, and with the Kronos Quartet, the Miami String Quartet, and members of the Emerson, Guarneri, and St. Lawrence quartets. From 1993 to 1998 he was founding director of MayMusic in Charlotte and is music director of The Chamber Music Conference and Composers' Forum of the East held each summer in Vermont. His most recent recording “The Complete Sonatas for Violin and Piano” by Beethoven was released earlier this year.

Since coming to Columbia in 2004, Bush has played music from many eras in a wide range of settings: the Bach and Beethoven at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Charles Ives, Philip Glass, Olivier Messiaen and John Zorn at the USC Southern Exposure series, and Glass and Bach at The White Mule nightclub. Not only is this the first time he has performed with the USC Symphony Orchestra - this is the first time he has performed with an orchestra in South Carolina.

The G major Concerto, written between 1804 and 1806, is considered the most gently-spoken and poetic of all Beethoven concertos.

“In a lot of ways it’s my favorite piano concerto,” Bush said. “It has a shimmering kind of beauty and is a pretty happy piece. It is revolutionary in its own way, not like some of the other more radical latter works, but it breaks with other concerto forms from that time.”

Bush became intimately familiar with the concerto while studying at Peabody Conservatory with Leon Fleisher who in 1959 recorded what is still considered the definitive version of the concerto. Bush has performed the concerto several times, the last time with the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra in the 1980s.

The concerto is well-known for its unusual solo piano opening. Although only 15 seconds long, it has been approached in many ways and nearly analyzed to death.  

“It is such an unusual and special moment that everyone makes a big deal of it,” Bush said. “As I’ve gotten older I think of it as a simple statement.” Still, he said, “it is a very important statement and sort of cosmic.”

The public premiere of the concerto in 1808 was part of a famous concert in which Beethoven made his last appearance as soloist with an orchestra. The concerto was largely ignored during Beethoven’s lifetime, until the Felix Mendelssohn rescued it from obscurity in 1836.

The piano introduces the singing character of the work and the ensuing themes in the first movement also have a lyrical quality. Many of the harmonic episodes of the movement are also forecast in the opening bars. The slow movement (widely associated with the imagery of Orpheus taming the Furies) sets up a restless dialogue between soloist and orchestra. The opening of the third movement features a harmonic juxtaposition similar to that in the first: the rondo begins softly in the “wrong key.” The full ensemble states the rondo theme and several intervening episodes provide some of the most ebullient music in the concerto with trumpets and timpani reinforcing these passages. Near the end of the movement after the cadenza, the work seems begins to subside peacefully, then ends with a triumphant flourish.

Bush will give a pre-concert talk at 6:45 p.m. at the rehearsal hall of the Koger Center.

Gian Carlo Menotti, a native of Italy but considered an American composer, is known to many as founder of the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, and the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston. Before that he was a ground-breaking opera composer. “The Telephone,” a one-act comedy in English, was first performed in 1947 along with the composer’s tragic “The Medium” in New York. The two were so successful they were transferred to Broadway where they ran for 211 performances. In “The Telephone” Ben has come to Lucy’s apartment to propose, but every time he gets ready to pop the question she makes or takes a telephone call. He ends up phoning her with his proposal. The performance features baritone Jacob Will, an assistant professor at the USC School of Music, and soprano Diana Amos, a graduate student at the school who has had an extensive European career. In June the two performed “The Telephone” during an all-Menotti concert conducted by USC Symphony Orchestra music director Donald Portnoy at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston.

“Diana Amos and Jacob Will gave the piece a nice workout,” wrote The New York Times. “Ms. Amos was especially impressive in passages that wove laughter or other nonverbal expression into the musical line.”

Tchaikovsky was inspired to write the “Capriccio Italien” during an extended stay in Rome during carnival season when the music – including revile bugles from a nearby military barracks - filled the air. The work was premiered in 1880 in Moscow. Guest conductor Lepore has conducted orchestras from Mexico to Portugal to Poland and composed soundtracks for several films.

7:30 p.m. at the Koger Center for the Arts, Assembly and Greene streets, Columbia. Tickets $25; $20 for seniors and USC faculty and staff; $8 for students. For more information and to purchase tickets call (803) 251-2222 or go to http://www.capitoltickets.com