KIRILL GERSTEIN Piano Recital / Review

 

KIRILL GERSTEIN Piano Recital 

Victoria Concert Hall 

Thursday (27 June 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 29 June 2024 with the title "Pianist Kirill Gerstein performs with imagination and musicality".

Russian-American pianist Kirill Gerstein is well-known for crafting his recitals on interesting themes using a creative mix of standard and unusual repertoire. His recital at the 2019 Singapore International Piano Festival had the overarching subject of “heroes and mortality”, but the theme of his largely Romantic programme this time around was not so clear cut. 

Frederic Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantasie in A flat major (Op.61) opened the recital, one of the Pole’s more complex and discursive late works. Its elaborate introduction was well-delineated, the playing crisp and clear-headed, and soon the characteristic polonaise rhythm was first sensed. This was not always apparent amid the fussy filigree, but its heroic strains would eventually prevail, shining like a beacon at its end. 

American jazz pianist Brad Mehldau’s short and moody Apres Faure No.13 (Nocturne) seemed a strange choice until heard as a prelude to Gabriel Faure’s Nocturne No.13 in B minor (Op.119), a late and seemingly forbidding work. The chromatic language uniting both pieces became key, the music turning restless and turbulent before closing darkly and quietly as how the Mehldau began. 

In complete contrast were Francis Poulenc’s rarely-heard Three Intermezzi, melodies and dances coloured with the frivolity and insouciance of Gay Paree. The first half concluded with Franz Liszt’s Polonaise No.2 in E major where unlike the earlier Chopin, its martial rhythm was worn proudly like a battle standard. The unabashed outward virtuosity was a case of Liszt out-Chopining Chopin, with a neat symmetry of programming now becoming more apparent. 

The second half almost replicated the first by beginning with Chopin, this time his Fantasy in F minor (Op.49), another extended work but dominated by a syncopated march rhythm. Gerstein’s technique was unimpeachable, delivering its grand climaxes with the force of personality the music deserved. 

Now the focus shifted to the Austro-Hungarian capital with Robert Schumann’s Faschingsschwank Aus Wien (Carnival Jest From Vienna), comprising five movements of irresistible song and dance. The chord-heavy opening movement was given buoyancy and lift, and humour in the form of cheeky quotes from La Marseillaise (the French national anthem, an echo of Paris again) and Beethoven was nicely rendered. 

This was by far the longest work, but Gerstein’s imagination and musicality made it a pleasure to behold. The Viennese waltz had to figure somewhere, and that was Sergei Rachmaninov’s delicious transcription of Fritz Kreisler’s violin classic Liebesleid (Love’s Sorrow), with freewheeling improvisatory flourishes sounding anything but mournful. 

Still in three-quarter time, Chopin’s ebullient Waltz in A flat major (Op.42) closed the recital proper on a spirited high. So what was the evening’s theme? Likely, an invitation to the dance. There was, however, nothing terpsichorean about Gerstein’s two equally impressive encores. 

A more moving performance of Rachmaninov’s Melodie (Op.3 No.3), in its original and unadorned edition, would be hard to find. And the swiftly running notes of the Bach-Busoni chorale prelude Nun freut euch, Lieben Christen g’mein (Rejoice, Beloved Christians) joyously swept the board.

Photos by Ung Ruey Loon

Kirill Gerstein was 

presented by Altenburg Arts.