This has been a week for cancellations. After Iceland’s volcanic eruptions shut down air travel across northern Europe, the La Jolla Music Society prudently decided to cancel Saturday’s (April 24) scheduled performance by the Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet at the Birch North Park Theatre because the company was on tour in Europe earlier this month, and the La Jolla management feared Cedar Lake would not be able to get back to North America in time for its local appearance.

San Diego Symphony.

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This week, the San Diego Symphony learned that Yefim Bronfman, featured pianist for its Beethoven Festival which was to have opened on Thursday, April 22, was too ill to perform. And that opening night concert had to be cancelled. After much scrambling, the Canadian pianist Jon Kimura Parker was signed on to play Saturday’s (April 24) Beethoven concert at Copley Hall, and Orli Shaham will fill in for the ailing Russian maestro on April 29. Symphony management believes that Bronfman will be able to play the remaining Beethoven concerts April 30 through May 2.

While some Bronfman aficionados were undoubtedly disappointed at his absence, there was nothing disappointing about Saturday’s opening of the Symphony’s Beethoven Festival. Between Music Director Jahja Ling’s stirring, ebullient interpretation of the Symphony No. 8 in F Major and Parker’s dazzling, commanding account of the “Emperor” Piano Concerto, it proved an evening of unadulterated celebration. Who could ask for more?

I have always admired Parker’s approach: an assertive, immaculate keyboard technique guided by a keen intellect, and for this concerto, such a combination is ideal. Throughout the majestic opening movement, Parker sculpted Beethoven’s muscular counterpoint with precise attacks and supple phrasing, without the slightest sacrifice of a singing tone, especially in the piano’s highest registers. His gestures were generous and grand, but never grandiose.

The reverent, hymn-like middle movement, for which Ling coaxed a particularly well-balanced and dulcet sonority from the string sections, calls for a completely different approach, and the soloist offered a delicate cantilena that could have graced the most evanescent Chopin nocturne.

In the Concerto’s concluding Rondo, the pianist and orchestra engaged in rollicking interplay worthy of a sword-fight in a classic Hollywood adventure flick. Parker’s wide variety of touch and articulation kept his contribution to the Rondo vivacious and fresh, while the orchestra’s propulsive drive fired a full-throated conclusion that never lost the dance-like quality beneath the surging surface.

Effusive applause greeted Parker, and he accommodated his audience with a fiery rendition of the Finale from Beethoven’s Appassionata Piano Sonata.

According to the program book, Ling intended to open his Beethoven Festival with the Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus, a short and popular piece of the Beethoven canon. But since that program was cancelled, the mighty Eighth Symphony served as the conductor’s inaugural salute, and for this listener, the choice could not have been better. One of the composer’s more concise and witty symphonies, the Eighth welcomed the audience to the festival with panache and sustained high spirits.

Ling gave us an exultant Eighth, where roiling strings were cooled by fluid, soothing chorales from the wind sections. The gentle ticking of the second movement, the composer’s sly tribute to the then recently invented Maelzel metronome, brought to mind a parallel movement in Haydn’s “Clock” Symphony, only one of the many inside jokes that Beethoven planted in this homage to that earlier symphonic form, a more tame endeavor before Beethoven got his hands on it. Ling and his compatriots kept a vivacious pace that nevertheless allowed all the humor to shine through.

Kudos to the horn section in the third-movement Trio for its sustained, lyrical flights accompanied by Principal Clarinet Sheryl Renk’s sparkling obbligato. At the work's conclusion, Ling appeared particularly pleased with the orchestra’s performance, for which he had every good reason. The Festival continues through May 2 at Copley Symphony Hall.

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