Concert Review: Double Delights: Mozart & the Kerns / March 24, 2018
By D. S. Crafts
for the Journal
Pianist Olga Kern, I think I can safely say, is the most beloved guest artist for the New Mexico Philharmonic. This past Saturday as a special treat she brought her son Vladislav to perform the Mozart Concerto in E-flat for Two Pianos.
When Mozart was eight, he toured with his 13-year old sister Nannerl performing together at either one or two keyboard instruments. Several years later he wrote his Double Piano Concerto with two equally challenging parts to perform with her. The concerto was a family affair. So a mother-son performing duo is very much in the spirit of the work.
With two grand pianos on the stage of Popejoy Auditorium we heard an almost operatic interplay of the two instruments with racing scales and sparkling trills in duplicate. Yet the work is no mere virtuosic vehicle, but a composition of maturity and substance. Mozart was careful to divide up the most striking and virtuosic passages evenly between the two solo players.
Accompanied by the Philharmonic led by Roberto Minczuk, the opening Allegro was suitably witty, playful and charming in its execution between the two pianists. The Andante became a truly personal expression both from composer and pianists.
The final sparkling Rondo movement (used in the film of the stage play Amadeus) found the pianists telling musical stories playfully to each other while alternating with the orchestra suitably cushioning or gently conversing with the two soloists.
Written in the same year that New Mexico attained statehood, Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-flat Major progresses as a single unbroken movement in three obvious sections and a precocious, youthful vein of abundant creativity is on display throughout.
Both conductor and soloist Olga gave swing and shape to the big tuttis – the three ‘whales’ as Prokofiev called them – that support the structure of the First Concerto. Kern then boldly took the spotlight with a strong sense of fun and fantasy. There was a wit and liveliness to her playing throughout. Kern’s technique as always was formidable, worthy of a former Tchaikovsky Competition winner, displaying ample warmth and passion among the humor.
Encores, following uproarious applause, came fast and furious. I can’t ever recall hearing four encores given at an orchestral concert. Vladislav Kern returned to play the first two of the Chopin Etudes. Olga continued in that vein playing Prokofiev’s Fourth Etude, then in a final dash of unmitigated bravado, both sat at the single piano for Rachmaninoff’s short but brilliant Italian Polka for piano 4-hands.
Following the break Minczuk returned to lead Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A Major. Occasionally, Beethoven wrote something that was immediately recognized as both artistically great and hugely popular. An example is the second movement of his Seventh Symphony, used perhaps most famously in the Boris Karloff-Bela Lugosi horror film, The Black Cat. Often described in funereal terms, the movement as directed by Minczuk at a fairly crisp pace told a much more happy and congenial story. There was a Bacchanalian drama and energy throughout the performance, but above all, Minczuk made the music sing. With flute, oboe and horns as Beethoven’s lead actors, celebratory emotions came across vividly in the outer movements especially, well defining the symphony’s distinctive rhythmic profile.
