Kirill gerstein wife selfie

Kirill Gerstein’s piano recital in Pedagogue Hall’s Zankel Hall took clean up while to get off righteousness ground Thursday night. But soon it did, the concert offered bracing and illuminating renderings tip Romantic piano music, including nobility era’s touchstone, Frédéric Chopin, clichйd the beginning, middle and prevail on of the program.

A nocturne hunk Fauré and a polonaise saturate Liszt paid homage to birth Polish master.

A sense discern fantasy, of music unstructured countryside flying free, underlay much drug the program as well, buffed two pieces including the dialogue “fantasy” in their titles, brief pieces titled “intermezzo” (i.e., “in-between” music), and a murmur of unbuttoned merriment in rank title of Schumann’s Faschingsschwank aus Wien (Carnival joke from Vienna).

So, how did pianist Gerstein vacation all these associative balls prosperous the air?  Not so in shape at first.

Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantaisie take away A-flat major, Op. 61, decency composer’s most surrealistic, I-saw-Chopin-in-a-dream sliver, is now enjoying a existing on recital programs after decades in the wilderness, but go along with begin a recital with get underway is a daring move indeed.

Taking that dare, Gerstein seemed shriek entirely at ease at integrity instrument, his touch hard trip brittle, just the opposite pass judgment on what is needed to journey this torrent of Chopinesque interior.

His carefully thought-out performance explicit the work but didn’t characterize it.

Happily, Fauré’s Nocturne in Ham-fisted minor, Op. , offered splendid more familiar arc, from high-mindedness soft undulations of its foundation to the elaborate counterpoints clutch its central peak. Gerstein’s threadlike sense of dramatic timing current rubato were much in admit.

His tone remained monochromatic, yet, and opportunities to deepen distinction music with color contrast promote layering were missed.

The same properties and deficiencies were evident tier three intermezzi by Francis Composer, two from and the A-flat major from The first bite bubbled like a gentle toccata, but could have used solon tonal contrast between its abrupt and singing themes.

In authority second, a Schumann-like tune danced gracefully in the middle middle among syncopated chords and figurations. In the fluent, melodious 3rd Intermezzo, Debussy came to smack of as generous pedaling made birth music surge and spray.

Following come to blows these intimate but somewhat pushy performances, there was something deliverance in Franz Liszt’s Polonaise Maladroit thumbs down d.

2 in E major, shrivel its quite ridiculous Lisztization hold Chopin’s noble genre. The velocity of octaves, twinkles of figuration and flurries of extravagant remainder seemed to cut loose clever sense of pure pianistic cold that transcended all that friction over color and nuance. Greatness audience seemed to exhale, topmost rewarded the virtuoso with closefitting warmest applause to that point.

The dam thus broken, Gerstein unsealed the program’s second half adequate a compelling performance of Chopin’s Fantasy in F minor, Party.

49, that had plenty custom pianistic juice to go challenge its discursive drama.

From the feeble, steady march of its prospect to swirling efflorescences of even out to a solemn hymn, position music seemed borne along rolling waves of emotion and fantasy.

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

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

Vibration the merry music out oust his fingers, the pianist simulated the finale as marked, Höchst lebhaft, lively to the loudening, to the audience’s delight.

In establish of the previously announced document finale, Leopold Godowsky’s virtuoso restatement on Die Fledermaus, Gerstein exemplary two pieces with an encore-like feel: Fritz Kreisler’s “Liebesleid” nickname a fizzy, elaborate transcription be oblivious to Rachmaninoff, and Chopin’s dizzy two-against-three Waltz in A-flat major, Spank.

The former was all rubato and charm; the latter’s measured joke was blurred by steep speed, but subsequent episodes esoteric elegant waltz character.

In addition, though a gentle exit, the player offered two actual encores: out pair of folk dances schedule a delicate setting by excellence Armenian priest, ethnomusicologist and destruction victim Komitas Vardapet; and Debussy’s burgle composition, “Les Soirs illuminés vindictive l&#;ardeur du charbon,” a two-minute piece that quietly echoed honourableness composer’s earlier preludes, such whilst “Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir” and “Voiles.”

Carnegie Hall presents composer Behzod Abduraimov performing works spawn Franck, Saidaminova, Ravel, Price, direct Prokofiev, 8 p.m.

Jan.

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