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 March 5, 2016 “When one door closes, another door opens,” as Alexander Graham Bell famously said. Peter Serkin was to have been the soloist in Johannes Brahms’s gargantuan Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor with the San Antonio Symphony this weekend, but he (presumably using Mr. Bell’s quaint invention) called in sick. Frantic scrambling for an 11th-hour  replacement ensued. Jon Kimura Parker, conveniently located in Houston, was unavailable. But Norman Krieger, less conveniently located in Los Angeles, was available, and he knew the piece — had, in fact, performed it here in 1992. He flew in on Thursday night, and the first performance was Friday in the Tobin Center, with music director Sebastian Lang-Lessing conducting. The all-German program was very much in Mr. Lang-Lessing’s wheelhouse. The concert opened with the Brahms concerto and closed with Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 4. Between them came Detlev Glanert’s Three American Preludes, in effect a symphony in three movements, the second of which was a world premiere.  A native of Los Angeles (and now teaching at the University of Southern California), Mr. Krieger first came to wide notice as one of the most promising  competitors in the 1981 Van Cliburn International Competition — a cohort that included the future luminaries Jeffrey Kahane, Santiago Rodriguez and André-Michel Schub, the eventual winner. In the Brahms concerto, Mr. Krieger proved to be a musician of integrity and substance, even wisdom.  His technique was ample if not especially brilliant — the most demanding passages in the first movement, such as the double octave fortissimo runs near the end, were executed in somewhat soft focus — but his playing was consistently musical, flexible and true to the heart of the matter. The dolce passages in the slow movement floated with miraculous weightlessness. Throughout, Mr. Krieger projected plenty of power when needed, but never at the cost of beautiful tone; his left and right hands were admirably in balance.  Some other pianists might convey more of the epic tremendousness of this concerto (completed in 1858 when the composer was a hot-blooded 25-year-old), but this performance satisfied in more fundamental ways. Understandably, given the short preparation time, the orchestra and soloist were not consistently unified, but orchestral ensemble in general was less precise than has been the norm this season. The violins, pushed a few feet farther back than usual, sounded a little thin. Still, Mr. Lang-Lessing coaxed warm, lovely balances from the orchestra, and there were some splendid solos from principals, most notably Jeff Garza on horn.  Mr. Lang-Lessing  has long been interested in the music of his countryman Detlev Glanert, born in Hamburg in 1960. Glanert’s orchestration and expansion of Brahms’s Four Serious Songs was heard here in 2011, and last season he composed one of the commissioned works that celebrated the symphony’s inaugural season in the Tobin Center. The latter piece became the third movement of Glanert’s Three American Preludes. The second, heard for the first time in this concert, was also commissioned by the San Antonio Symphony, and the first was commissioned by the Tanglewood Music Center.  In total, the work runs about 22 minutes — and they are uncommonly eventful, colorful, protean minutes, shifting mood frequently. The first movement pivots between grandiloquent brass and broad, lyrical strings; a kooky waltz gets rowdy, but the movement closes quietly. The new second movement begins with eery, mysterious percussion; the violas and celli introduce slow, mournful music that seems influenced by both Mahler and the blues, but a big crescendo takes the music into violent, brassy territory. The finale recalls Hollywood and (briefly) a marching band along a trajectory from its quiet opening to its ardent conclusion. The piece has the legs to carry it far. Schumann is something of a specialty for Mr. Lang-Lessing, who recorded all four of the symphonies with his Tasmanian orchestra several years before taking the San Antonio post. He conducted the Schumann Fourth without a score, and clearly didn’t need one. His step may have been a little too heavy in the outer sections of the scherzo, but elsewherethe performance was robust, lithe, richly detailed and affectionately shaped, with a clear sense of line, careful adjustments in tempo and — a Lang-Lessing trademark — glorious accelerandos. Mike Greenberg

Brahms in his mid-20s

San Antonio Symphony, SLL, Norman Krieger

Norman Krieger

In trouble? Better call Norman

incident light

Detlev GlanertPhoto:  Iko Freese

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