Balance and nuance from piano virtuoso

This was published 11 months ago

Balance and nuance from piano virtuoso


Kirill Gerstein in Recital. City Recital Hall, August 5


Sydney Town Hall. August 7

Kirill Gerstein's recital wove together themes of heroism, martyrdom and memorial arising, from moments of social tumult. In Liszt's Transcendental Study Eroica, he avoided over-emphasising bravura, bringing nuance rather than epauletted pomposity to its march theme.

Pianist  Kirill Gerstein stylishly mixed the Beethovenian scowl with the Beethovenian smile.

Pianist Kirill Gerstein stylishly mixed the Beethovenian scowl with the Beethovenian smile.Credit:Marco Borggreve

In Beethoven's Variations and Fugue in E flat major, Opus 35, based on a theme Beethoven had already used twice and would later use in the finale of his "Eroica" Symphony, Gerstein found an ideal mixture of wit and seriousness, gruffness and subtlety, stylishly mixing the Beethovenian scowl with the Beethovenian smile.

Janacek's Piano Sonata 1, From the Street, written in response to the bayonetting in 1905 of a Czech demonstrator, survives in incomplete form due to the composer's destruction of the manuscript. In the two surviving movements Gerstein took the listener to the still central point of darkness and reflection.

The second half moved from the darkness of Liszt's Funerailles, Thomas Ades Berceuse (from his opera The Exterminating Angel) and Debussy's final piano work Elegie (1917) to some intriguing Armenian folk arrangements by Komitas, a composer traumatised by his arrest during the Armenian Genocide. In Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin, written to extol the French spirit during the First World War, Gerstein drew out line exquisitely in the Fugue, creating layered textures of tonal subtlety.

On Wednesday, the SSO under David Robertson moved to the Town Hall, which is to be its new home during the renovations of the Opera House Concert Hall over the next two years.

The venue's acoustic qualities were apparent in the clarity of upper harmonics in the string sound in Sibelius's En Saga. Gerstein played Grieg's Piano Concerto with subtly tapered phrasing, refinement of texture and surging energy.

The muted string opening movement of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, Daydreams, also worked well in this space, as did the splendid open rawness of the ophicleide in the Dies Irae theme of the finale.

This instrument, used widely in the early 19th century, is often replaced by the tuba in modern orchestras, but Nick Byrne champions it in SSO performances.

In places, the Town Hall acoustic makes balance and blend more separated and less cohesive and in some seats the sound tends to go over one's head because of the high stage. A tennis umpire chair in the stalls would probably be ideal.

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