Kirill Gerstein

Fireworks for the New Year? The Houston Symphony could hardly have launched the city’s 2012 music scene with a bigger bang than RachFest, a three-weekend series celebrating the genius of Sergei Rachmaninoff, with pianist Kirill Gerstein playing all four of the composer’s notoriously challenging piano concertos.

Thursday’s opening of the first of three RachFest programs found Gerstein starting at the top of the mountain by tackling the gargantuan Piano Concerto No. 3, most devilishly difficult of all. As the orchestra’s marketing for RachFest is cleverly cued to a prize fight motif, let’s just say that, in tandem with the astute leadership of guest conductor Edward Gardner, Gerstein scored a knockout.

Rachmaninoff’s output constituted the last great flowering of Russian romanticism and, being one of history’s greatest piano virtuosos himself, his writing for the instrument expanded its possibilities, combining passionate expressiveness with technical pyrotechnics. Nowhere is that more true than in the volatile “Rach 3”.

In Thursday’s performance, Gerstein consistently met the work’s challenges and complexities: the dense chords, intricate figuration and those incessantly rolling, perpetual-motion runs. His total mastery of the first movement’s epic cadenza was in itself a feat of breathless brilliance.

Beyond the sheer stamina and keyboard acrobatics the work demands, Gerstein’s playing was distinguished by his mastery of the music’s ever shifting moods. He unleashed the fire of feverishly impassioned moments, then bought subtle artistry to more delicate effects, as when a lyrical passage trailed to a whisper in the keyboard’s upper reaches and vanished in a feathery trill.

Gardner’s thoughtful, authoritative conducting proved crucial, both in keeping the soloist and orchestra in balance, and giving the same attention to the overall architecture as to the most intimate detail of a solo woodwind. Gardner’s decisiveness and the orchestra’s responsive playing proved especially impressive in the third movement’s thunderous finale.

The program closed with the Symphonic Dances, Rachmaninoff’s final work; rarely has a composer’s “swan song” been so full of vitality and fresh invention. The three-movement suite explored “modernist” paths new to him, but with his identifiable musical personality intact.

Gardner led a rendition whose sustained inspiration matched that of the music. Amid spectacular explosions of pure orchestral razzle-dazzle, there were such revelatory scenes as the first movement’s lyrical woodwind interlude, highlighted by Nathan Nabb’s superb alto sax solo, and the second movement’s ominously lopsided waltz, punctuated by startling, dissonant brass fanfares. Along with masterful control of tempo and volume, and his emphatic definition of the often warring dance rhythms (as in the explosive final movement), Gardner’s interpretation conveyed the quality of world-weariness in the composer’s final surges of lyricism.

Houston Symphony: RachFest 1
When: 8 p.m. Saturday, 2:30 p.m. Sunday
Where: Jones Hall, 615 Louisiana
Tickets: $25-$119; 713-224-7575