Famous pianist overdoes it at CFA performance

Author: Andrew Throdahl

Could it be possible that young concert pianists have so mastered technique that they have become oblivious to acceptable interpretation? The October 26th concert answered with a resounding, at times deafening, "yes" in response to this question. The concert, comprised of Bach-Busoni, Bach-Feinberg, Chopin and Liszt, was performed by the young Russian-and-rushing pianist Polina Leschenko - her hair billowing, her fingers flying - in a full Mahaney Center for the Arts Concert Hall.

The concert opened with a promising performance of a questionable transcription. As with most Busoni transcriptions, the piano version of the Chaconne from the second Violin Partita in D Minor seems to be the Romantic apotheosis of an already powerful composition. At times when played on the piano, the Chaconne seems poorly written. A violin playing the opening chords as quadruple-stops helps bring out the piece's counterpoint, whereas on the piano the chords - filled out and romanticized by Busoni - sound metallic and harsh rather than nuanced. Leschenko played the work more faithful to Busoni than to Bach, which may have ruffled some violinists' feathers. Of note was Leschenko's tendency to accelerate for emotional effect, certainly contrary to what Bach would have intended. Overall the interpretation of the Chaconne, which included an apt pause between the uplifting climax and the return of the theme, seemed to be at least thoughtful if not auspicious.

When the program shifted from piano transcriptions of Bach to piano transcriptions of Paganini, things took a turn for the worst. Liszt's sixth "Etude after Paganini," taken from the famous 24th Caprice - the basis for Brahms, Rachmaninoff and Lutoslawski variation cycles - is designed to be more an impressive encore than filler for a serious recital. The work came off as more apocalyptic than crafty. Leshenko's sense for 'showbiz' became apparent as she stood up and bowed before the audience had time to react with applause.

She seemed to rush through the breezy Chopin "Andante Spianato et Grande Polonaise Brilliante," although she restrained herself from playing percussively. In the Andante, when the nocturnal accompaniment stops and a lovely series of chords takes over, one felt like she was pressing fast-forward, getting to the showy part. Even in the Grande Polonaise, which thankfully was not played as gratingly as the Busoni and Liszt, the volume could have stood to be turned down a notch. In acoustics that call for some withholding, her pedaling and her speed made the flourishes that riddle the Polonaise muddled. The Chopin was probably the highlight of the program for many audience members, yet Leschenko seemed deaf to many of the richest passages, which were treated as exercises rather than melodic niceties. Some members of the audience began to laugh towards the end of the Polonaise, perhaps thinking the piece was more an over-the-top show piece than a gem in the repertoire.

The program concluded with an interpretively disastrous performance of Franz Liszt's most significant composition, the Sonata in B minor. The Liszt Sonata tries to pick up where Beethoven's late sonatas left off, introducing simple motives and drawing 25 minutes worth of material, even a fugue, out of them. Instead of stating the crucial opening theme simply, declaratively, so that the audience members unfamiliar with the work might be able to figure out what happens later on in this warhorse, Leschenko added some unnecessary rubato and over-done accents. The spiky second theme was played strangely each time it appeared, either so percussively it sounded like Soviet war music or so fast that one could not hear the repeated notes. As with the rest of the works on the program, Leschenko took passages marked forte or fortissimo as a cue to play incoherently fast and harshly. The result was a performance that took the grand architecture of the sonata for granted, instead showing off meaningless technique and histrionics. Only during soft passages was there the slightest glimpse at some artistic integrity.

From Romantic Bach to Romanticism to more Romanticism, Leschenko's program instilled a sense of confusion and seemed to have been put together to impress a young, immature crowd. Although Leschenko tried, through her technically accurate aplomb, wavy hair and distracting hand motions, to saturate the pieces with emotion, the works instead came off as grotesque, at times arid.

A slightly more subdued Polina Leschenko can be heard playing all the works performed on Friday evening's concert on the EMI "Martha Argerich Presents Polina Leschenko" compact disk and on her Avanti Multichannel CD entitled "Liszt Recital." Both recordings can be purchased on iTunes Music Store.