Many a musical career has been launched or at least jump-started when a performer has unexpectedly filled in for an ailing colleague.

The late conductor Leonard Bernstein and reigning tenor Placido Domingo immediately come to mind. French-Canadian pianist Louis Lortie was scheduled to play the Robert Schumann “Piano Concerto in A Minor” with the San Diego Symphony this weekend, but on a recent hiking outing in France, he fell and broke his arm, an injury that is more than an inconvenience to a concert pianist.

Andrew von Oeyen, a striking 32-year-old American pianist, was called in to substitute for Lortie not only here, but also with the Oklahoma City Philharmonic and the Calgary Philharmonic. Let’s hope that these exposures bring von Oeyen wider attention, because his interpretive prowess and digital subtlety far exceed those traits demonstrated by the most recent crop of fawned-over Asian virtuosi.

From the opening moments of the Schumann Concerto, von Oeyen he made it clear that he was more interested in mining the emotional lode of Schumann’s work rather than flaunting his own keyboard calisthenics.

In truth, although Schumann wrote only one piano concerto, there are two versions in circulation. We heard the tired academic warhorse, the “too-tame-for-prime-time” version of the A Minor Piano Concerto in the fall of 2010, when the Dresden Staatskapelle and pianist Rudolph Buchbinder visited Copley Hall.

Von Oeyen offered the other one, the playful, always surprising, youthful A Minor Piano Concerto, which he vividly enlivened with sympathetic assistance from both the orchestra and Music Director Jahja Ling.

Von Oeyen’s lithe articulation and sweet but unapologetic sonority brought out the unabashed rhapsodic character of the first movement, which the composer originally wrote as a single-movement “Phantasie in A Minor” for orchestra and piano and only later added the other two movements to turn it into the concerto we know today.

Among the performer's other laudable characteristics, von Oeyen was not afraid to give quiet passages an intimate quality in a large hall or to linger over a graceful cadence.

I found great satisfaction in Ling and von Oeyen’s charming dialogue of the middle movement, where elegance and exuberance never fought one another.

The soloist’s bravura account of the final movement demonstrated that technical muscle can serve the music rather than simply preen in the mirror. From the orchestra, Principal Oboe Sarah Skuster’s pliant, opulent solos enriched the tapestry of the opening movement, as did the fewer but equally supple contributions of Principal Clarinet Sheryl Renk.

Ling and his unexpected guest pianist fused a vision of this concerto that perfectly balanced its Romantic melodic effusions and Classical structural aspirations. Who could ask for anything more?

Balancing the Schumann Piano Concerto with Johannes Brahms’ “Third Symphony in F Major” may not have been particularly original, but it is hard to gainsay Ling’s thoughtful pairing.

Brahms found his musical identity in that same middle ground on the Classical-Romantic continuum as did Robert Schumann, but with greater skills in building musical structure. Ling’s approach to the opening movement offered more than a little promise: he imbued the major-mode theme with a lighter, dance-like air and allowed the assertive, minor-mode secondary theme just enough menace to maintain a well-balanced tension.

His drive in the development section proved laudable, even if the winds and brass occasionally overpowered the string section. The orchestra’s account of the second movement provided just enough warmth to conjure its bucolic tone, and Ling’s relaxed tempo allowed it to bloom liesurely.

But the third movement, the Poco allegretto with its arching theme that so embodies Brahms’ conflicted union of hope and despair, remained earthbound.

It began plainly, and the theme gained little poignance as it moved about the orchestra. Ling clearly loves this symphony, and he conducted it from memory, but despite a promising beginning, he did not bring it home with redemptive conviction.

Wagner’s Overture to “The Flying Dutchman” opened the concert, and I can only say that a pit orchestra that poured that amount of energy and bluster into this overture would not have enough stamina to last through the opera's final act.

It was, however, a stirring demonstration of the substantial heft of the symphony's brass sections.

Press Here For Program