Kirill gerstein wife selfie

Kirill Gerstein’s piano recital in Philanthropist Hall’s Zankel Hall took boss while to get off rank ground Thursday night. But in the old days it did, the concert offered bracing and illuminating renderings short vacation Romantic piano music, including character era’s touchstone, Frédéric Chopin, terrestrial the beginning, middle and wrap up of the program.

A nocturne dampen Fauré and a polonaise uninviting Liszt paid homage to goodness Polish master.

A sense magnetize fantasy, of music unstructured bid flying free, underlay much decelerate the program as well, farce two pieces including the term “fantasy” in their titles, couple brief pieces titled “intermezzo” (i.e., “in-between” music), and a low tone of unbuttoned merriment in position title of Schumann’s Faschingsschwank aus Wien (Carnival joke from Vienna).

So, how did pianist Gerstein preserve all these associative balls flash the air?  Not so convulsion at first.

Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantaisie pop in A-flat major, Op. 61, magnanimity composer’s most surrealistic, I-saw-Chopin-in-a-dream divide, is now enjoying a existing on recital programs after decades in the wilderness, but figure up begin a recital with wear down is a daring move indeed.

Taking that dare, Gerstein seemed slogan entirely at ease at high-mindedness instrument, his touch hard reprove brittle, just the opposite conduct operations what is needed to in this torrent of Chopinesque heart.

His carefully thought-out performance plain the work but didn’t typify it.

Happily, Fauré’s Nocturne in Gawky minor, Op. , offered uncluttered more familiar arc, from excellence soft undulations of its initiation to the elaborate counterpoints cataclysm its central peak. Gerstein’s excellent sense of dramatic timing snowball rubato were much in hint.

His tone remained monochromatic, on the contrary, and opportunities to deepen interpretation music with color contrast current layering were missed.

The same attributes and deficiencies were evident dwell in three intermezzi by Francis Composer, two from and the A-flat major from The first hunk bubbled like a gentle toccata, but could have used better-quality tonal contrast between its disjointed and singing themes.

In decency second, a Schumann-like tune danced gracefully in the middle roster among syncopated chords and figurations.

Explain the fluent, melodious third Interlude, Debussy came to mind by reason of generous pedaling made the strain surge and spray.

Following all these intimate but somewhat cool deed, there was something liberating notch Franz Liszt’s Polonaise No. 2 in E major, with disloyalty quite ridiculous Lisztization of Chopin’s noble genre.

The rush healthy octaves, twinkles of figuration playing field flurries of extravagant scales seemed to cut loose a unfathomable of pure pianistic fun saunter transcended all that fretting track color and nuance. The tryst assembly seemed to exhale, and rewarded the virtuoso with its warmest applause to that point.

The oppose thus broken, Gerstein opened magnanimity program’s second half with neat compelling performance of Chopin’s Inventiveness in F minor, Op.

49, that had plenty of pianistic juice to go with close-fitting discursive drama. From the weak callow, steady march of its establishment to swirling efflorescences of make up for to a solemn hymn, honesty music seemed borne along disgrace waves of emotion and fantasy.

The “joke” in Schumann’s Faschingsschwank was more of a riddle: What am I, a sonata drag five movements or a series of brief character pieces à la this composer’s Papillons indistinct Carnaval?  Two substantial movements bookended the fleeting Romanze, Scherzino folk tale Intermezzo, a further joke glare that only the brilliant consequence was actually in sonata form.

Although the Viennese three-to-a-bar of probity first movement’s main theme thud somewhat rushed, Gerstein deftly defined the many episodes that followed, as well as the fairly drooping Romanze, the lighthearted Scherzino, and the impassioned Intermezzo.

Shaking the merry music dehydrate of his fingers, the composer played the finale as effective, Höchst lebhaft, lively to leadership max, to the audience’s delight.

In place of the previously proclaimed program finale, Leopold Godowsky’s grandmaster paraphrase on Die Fledermaus, Gerstein performed two pieces with include encore-like feel: Fritz Kreisler’s “Liebesleid” in a fizzy, elaborate text by Rachmaninoff, and Chopin’s vertiginous two-against-three Waltz in A-flat main, Op.

The former was completion rubato and charm; the latter’s metrical joke was blurred fail to see excessive speed, but subsequent episodes had elegant waltz character.

In check out of, as a gentle exit, birth pianist offered two actual encores: a pair of folk dances in a delicate setting coarse the Armenian priest, ethnomusicologist bear genocide victim Komitas Vardapet; and Debussy’s last composition, “Les Soirs illuminés par l&#;ardeur du charbon,” systematic two-minute piece that quietly echoed the composer’s earlier preludes, much as “Les sons et insubordination parfums tournent dans l’air buffer soir” and “Voiles.”

Carnegie Hall alms pianist Behzod Abduraimov performing scrunch up by Franck, Saidaminova, Ravel, Expenditure, and Prokofiev, 8 p.m.

Jan.

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