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In only five years, the Miami International Piano Festival
of Discovery has earned a reputation for presenting some of
today's most gifted keyboard artists in intimate solo recitals.
Saturday night's program at the Broward Center's Amaturo
Theater offered a festival first with a concerto evening featuring
not one, but three different pianists performing a trio of
Mozart concertos. Igor Gruppman conducted a chamber orchestra
drawn from members of the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra.
With their exposed piano writing and elegant yet deceptively
difficult Classical style, Mozart's concertante works offer
a daunting challenge to artists schooled in music of late
Romantic composers. The three talented pianists heard Saturday
offered a fascinating compare-and-contrast in interpretive
approaches and music-making.
Piotr Anderszewski tackled the conducting as well as solo
assignment in Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24. Only one of
two works in this genre Mozart wrote in a minor key, the concerto
is created on the largest scale for large forces (somewhat
reduced here). In its restless drama and unblinking gaze into
the abyss, this remains one of Mozart's darkest works.
Playing with incisive dexterity and a golden tone, the pianist
presented a performance that was fiery and eloquent, bringing
out the surging drama and unease of this stormy music. Conducting
from the keyboard, Anderszewski's solo work was so seamlessly
integrated with the orchestra, it was like chamber music writ
large.
Anderszewski's own cadenza was clever yet traditional, nicely
wrought from Mozart's rich thematic material. Compared to
the parade of podium nonentities this season, Anderszewski's
conducting was strikingly impressive, tight and as keenly
focused with razor-edge ensemble. Management should snap him
up right away for similar double-duty at future Philharmonic
concerts.
Pietro De Maria had the thankless task of following that
remarkable performance, but more than held his own in Mozart's
Piano Concerto No. 9. Graceful and limpid, De Maria's technical
polish and cascading passagework made an equally strong case
for this earlier, lighter work.
Francesco Libetta is a pianist of dizzying virtuosic fire
and in Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 one got the sense of
the Italian musician straining to keep his whirlwind technique
within Rococo parameters, not always successfully. While the
famous Andante was gracious and poised, Libetta's anachronistic
grace notes and cadenza, flowing over into post-Classical
keyboard range, tended to overspike the soup, a minor blemish
on an otherwise fine performance.
The concert began with Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat
major for violin and viola, with Gruppman and Vesna Gruppman
as soloists. The duo kept admirable concentration in the rapt
Andante while ushers allowed numerous latecomers to shuffle
slowly to their seats. But this was an unexceptional performance
and added little to the evening except to push its duration
to the three-hour mark.
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