To play Beethoven, Augustin Hadelich returns to the arena of his triumph

Decades ago, the leading American concert violinist Isaac Stern appeared as a talk-show guest and talked briefly about audience behavior. He told of a time he was playing the Beethoven concerto, and during the second movement— which "goes straight up to heaven," I remember him saying — he noticed that a woman in the front row had draped her coat over the edge of the stage.

Stern continued, of course, but reported  being annoyed at the sight of that coat. "That's my space!" he exclaimed justifiably of the stage he and the orchestra had occupied. 

I bring that up in this account of Augustin Hadelich's performance Friday night of the  same concerto with

IVCI gold medalist Hadelich has a host of fans here.

the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, with Vladimir Kulenovic on the podium. (A second performance happens this afternoon at 5:30.) It's relevant because not only is there a spiritual dimension in Beethoven's Larghetto that Hadelich and the orchestra succeeded in bringing out, but the behavior of the large audience was exemplary. 

It was even close to ideal throughout the concert, and that deserves comment up front because it revealed not only the deep admiration local music-lovers have for Hadelich, but also helps wipe away any notion that Hoosiers are rubes in matters of concert etiquette.

Reveling in audience behavior as well as the music performed might seem odd, but when the silence is in all the right places (including between movements of the concerto and of Brahms' Third Symphony), the music is lifted up. And there was nothing lukewarm about the response. The tumultuous ovation after the concerto received the gift of two solo encores: the soloist's arrangement of "Wild Fiddler's Rag," droll and energetic, and Carlos Gardel's "Por Una Cabeza," a classic tango also arranged by Hadelich.

The Italian-born German-American violinist has been back here several times since winning the 2006 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. He always makes a good impression. He seems to enter fully into the personality of every composition he brings to the public: the range of associations in Friday's pair of encores demonstrated that. I have heard excellent Ysaye, Mozart, and Bartok from him both recorded and in concert. He puts his personality on everything without homogenizing the material.

Whatever the spiritual reach of the second movement, noted by Stern and many others, the work is a masterpiece that doesn't seem to strive for profundity. For the solo instrument, it lies high and prioritizes nimbleness. The score prizes momentum even in the long first movement. It was first performed, with the ink hardly dry on the page, by Franz Clement, who was famous for the lightness and high spirits of his playing. 

The ISO program notes repeat the legend that Clement inserted pieces of his own between the first and second movements, including playing his instrument upside down. The story is featured in the sleeve notes of an LP I own featuring Jascha Heifetz and the Boston Symphony. In "The Concerto," Michael Steinberg makes clear that Clement didn't have such nerve, but put his own pieces at the end of the program. 

At any rate, the manner presented by Hadelich and Kulenovic was true to the nature of the composition. Hadelich's use of the Fritz Kreisler cadenzas helped link the work firmly to the Viennese tradition of not prioritizing solemnity. The long orchestral tutti before the soloist enters promised a reading that could have turned too solemn, but the performance unfolded with pervasive gracefulness.

The concert's first half contains a novelty: Lili Boulanger's "D'un matin de printemps" (On a Spring Morning). The French composer, who died at 25 shortly after completing this work, bears signs of genius in this and other pieces. Her knowledge of what she wanted to do in original composition was extraordinary, and she husbands it in this six-minute piece in a fashion both colorful and concentrated. There are a number of picturesque pieces by French composers that demonstrate anything but a superficial touch, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" by Paul Dukas being the best-known. The ISO's first performance of the Boulanger work suggests it deserves to be programmed again, with luck by an interpreter as sympathetic to it as Kulenovic.

Now based in Chicago area, where he is music director of the Lake Forest Symphony, Kulenovic is making a return visit to the ISO. On Friday, with genial expansiveness and fighting back husky vocal cords until a patron kindly handed him a bottle of water, Kulenovic commented effusively on Boulanger and said a few words about the Brahms Symphony No. 3 in F major and its gestation by the turbulent waters of the Rhine. There was thus a readymade link to his immediate need to calm a scratchy throat with safe, donated water.

The performance was a marvel of detail and the kind of clarity that set aside the notion that Brahms' orchestration lacks translucency. Kulenovic's large, precise gestures communicated well, though they came close to overcueing. The stirring energy of the first and last movements was well-shaped, with all instrumental choirs well-integrated. The sound never seemed too crowded or out of breath. 

Of the solo and sectional bows Kulenovic signaled at the end, the first and most deserved one was for  clarinetist Samuel Rothstein, whose limpid playing as acting principal made the second movement extra special. (Oh, how we look forward to the durable "acting" tag being removed from several ISO members' titles as auditions proceed and new music director Jun Märkl shapes the ensemble!)