In the musical
world, there are artists who draw listeners into the inner spiritual world of
the musical masterpiece, and there are others whose sheer abilities on his or
her instrument draw our attention to the potential of that instrument. Pianist
Olga Kern, I think, firmly belongs to the latter category of instrumentalists.
Kern made her
Vancouver Chopin Society debut last night in a mammoth programme of Schumann,
Alkan, Chopin, and Rachmaninoff. I found it curious that the pianist chose to
open her programme with Schumann’s Carnaval
(Op. 9), a work that many pianists would end
their concert with. In fact, opening the concert with Carnaval, and closing off the first half with Chopin’s Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor, Op. 35,
made Alkan’s Etude in G Major, Op. 35, the work performed between the two major
works, superfluous, and nothing more than a vehicle to demonstrate the
pianist’s dexterity.
I found Kern’s
interpretation of Carnaval, well,
uncomfortable. Her excessive use of rubato throughout the work seriously
hampers the flow of the music. Moreover, rather than conceiving the set as a
whole, I felt that she treats each of the twenty sections as individual pieces,
and I missed the sense of organic unity that the work calls for. In Chiarina, her distortion of the rhythm
almost completely obliterates Schumann’s passionato
indication. In the final Marche des
“Davidsbündler” contre les Philistins, there was a lack of a sense of
inevitable drive towards the end, in spite of the pianist’s blistering
virtuosity.
I was also
surprised that Kern decided to play the Sphinxes
section. I know that pianists as great as Rachmaninoff had included these few
notes in his recording, but I really believe that Schumann intended this
section as a riddle, an enigma or a puzzle for the player, and that these notes
really shouldn’t be played.
Alkan’s Etude in G Major was well played, and
amply demonstrated the young pianist’s considerable ability around the
keyboard. Alkan had written many fine and original works, but this piece is
really nothing more than a showpiece, not worthy of being in the company of Carnaval and Chopin’s Sonata.
The first moments
of Chopin’s Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor began promisingly enough, with great
drama, and plenty of drive. Came the second subject and Kern’s excessive rubato again destroyed the intricate structure
of the first movement. In the left hand octave passage of the coda (mm 230 to
235), she slowed the tempo to such an extent that the impetus of the music was
completely gone. In the scherzo, the
dramatic A section came off better than the lyrical (Piu lento) B section. I got the sense that Kern was playing from
climax to climax. When it came to the lyrical sections of the music, she
somehow felt that she had to highlight the music to accentuate its beauty, thus
robbing the music of naturalness.
After the
intermission, Kern was much more in her element in a selection of three of
Rachmaninoff’s Etude Tableaux, as
well as a selection of nine Preludes
from Op. 23, Op. 32 and Op. 3, ending with a take-no-prisoner performance of
the Prelude in B-flat Major, Op. 23,
No. 2. The performances here were much more idiomatic and, strangely enough,
more natural and flowing.
If I had any
reservations about the evening’s performance, I was obviously in the minority.
The audience rewarded the pianist with an ovation, and she in turned rewarded
the audience with four or five encores.
Vladimir Horowitz, a master of pianistic thunder, often played more lyrical
pieces in his encores. Kern would do
well to emulate this. All of her encores appeared to be more and more
virtuosic. Yes, it was impressive, but I found my ears getting very tired
toward the end of the evening, and I yearned to get away to some Bach and
Schubert.
In spite of the
high volume of Olga Kern’s playing, there was surprisingly a lack of variety in her pianistic colours. Things
were either soft or loud. She obviously reveled in passages of great passion
and brilliance. Perhaps, like Horowitz, she will mellow in her old age. Looking
at the pianist’s face as she brought off another pianistic feat is like looking
at the face of a child as he or she speeds down the lane on the new bicycle.
For now, Olga Kern
remains, for me, a brilliant instrumentalist that delights in showing off her
abilities at the instrument. What I kept wishing for was for her to bare her
soul to us through the music that she plays.