Not long before the reverberant sound of the last whomp of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1 in C Major smacked listeners right in the face — that's a good thing — keyboard god Jon Kimura Parker lowered his outstretched arms, leaped off his stool and embraced maestro Pablo Heras-Casado on the Houston Symphony stage.

The warm display of affection touched musicians and concert goers alike and nodded to Parker's appreciation of a tightly synchronized performance, one that left you wondering if both artists were musically separated at birth. That's not so easily accomplished with well-known pieces, where it's nearly impossible not to bring in one's own aesthetic baggage.

Then there's the question of who's in charge.

In straight forward works, it's the soloist that determines the pace. When the music turns conversational or rhythmically tricky, the responsibility shifts to the conductor. It's a constant song-and-dance that can feel like a beautifully crafted union or an all out nasty fight for divorce.

But Heras-Casado and Parker's collaboration confirmed that 1) Parker's interpretation is organically sensible and passionately transcendent and 2) Heras-Casado has the goods to tune in acutely and earnestly, and can provide a supportive texture for the soloist to do his thing, worry free.

Whether classical music junkies flocked to Jones Hall for the more traditional Beethoven and Schumann's Overture to Manfred or Igor Stravinsky's devilish Petrouchka, Sunday's musicale ended a three-concert Houston Symphony run with the young Granada-born conductor, who's on the short list to take the baton from Hans Graf when the Houston Symphony stalwart retires after the 2012-13 season.

Heras-Casado's Journey

The 34-year-old conductor made his debut with the Houston Symphony at a dollar concert in July with a playbill of middle-of-the-road core classical repertoire including Mozart's Overture to Don Giovanni, Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations and Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 3 in A minor. He also debuted with the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston and Chicago Symphonies in 2011, getting awarded the Medal of Honor by the Rodríguez Acosta Foundation in Granada.

Reviews like Steve Smith's for The New York Times (who wrote, "you left wanting to hear him conduct more, and soon") validate Heras-Casado's recent four-year appointment as the principal conductor of the Orchestra of St. Luke's in New York.

But one recent review was mixed.

Richard S. Ginell of the Los Angeles Times wrote that Heras-Casado "mistakes slowness for profundity, stretching out some passages too much to get any payoff — and three observed pauses were so long that one feared the audience might think the piece was over."

And that was apparent in Heras-Casado's interpretation of Manfred, whose unsettling and lugubrious textures need forward motion to avoid stagnation. The careful balance between respecting what's on the page and intuitively discerning what the music needs is mastered by Vasily Petrenko, whose rendering of Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5 with the Houston Symphony in March was one of the slowest, yet one of the most resolute and satisfying I have heard.

I wonder if Heras-Casado has a swimming or dance background, in addition to his love for mountain climbing, sailing and cycling. Without a baton, his visible gestures were unusual, yet effective, appearing as if he were in a mid butterfly stroke that intermixed with classical ballet.

No doubt Heras-Casado deliberately calculates the aesthetic power of his actions meticulously. He's a man that knows what he wants and has figured out how to get it — most of the time.

But with such attention to detail, it was baffling why he felt he needed a partiture.

Often conductors forgo a music score when performing the pièce de résistance. Sure, it could be argued that the 1947 revision of the original 1911 Petrouchka is so metrically complex that a performance without its roadmap would be risky business. But I have borne witness to scoreless concerts of Le sacre du printemps, which calls for much larger orchestral forces and relentless meter changes, that for a seasoned dirigent, it signals he may not be comfortable with the ballet.

In cases where conductors wish to connect more intimately with the musicians, the podium and music is a crutch that gets in the way of communication, even if all the players that contributed exposed solos — flute, clarinets, bassoons, trumpet, tuba and piano in particular — in this concert were spectacular.

Conductor/Entrepreneur

Heras-Casado earned a spot in Crain's New York Business' "40 Under Forty" list, with Crain's noting that "musicians who play with him are dazzled" and pointing out his entrepreneurial spirit, a key term in music conservatories right now.

Entrepreneurship from the artistic top dog is something the Houston Symphony would surely benefit from. The understanding of what it takes, across all administrative departments, to thrive in today's nonprofit environment has to be learned through experience and trial and error — it's nothing you can acquire from the latest business treatise or publication.

Through his tribulations founding several initiatives including SONÓORA — an ensemble that performs Webern and Varèse, new music and collaborates with young composers and companies in other artistic disciplines — the Orquesta Barroca de Granada, the International Choral Conducting Master Class in Valle de Ricote and the Compañía Teatro del Principe, Heras-Casado wasn't beneath designing posters, carrying instruments and being involved in the everyday dirty work of administration.

A Good Fit?

Musically speaking, other conductors were able to draw a more cohesive sound or more vibrant energy from the orchestral players. But as an overall package, one can argue that Heras-Casado has additional skills that could take the Houston Symphony over the 100-year-old hill.

That he speaks Spanish is a bonus.

The question becomes: Is the Houston Symphony willing to sacrifice music-making for these other skills?