| The Miami International
Piano Festival of Discovery opened its seventh season Thursday
night, and, like many relationships over the same number of
years, seems to be entering a period of adjustment.
Though it was founded to spotlight top keyboard artists,
the chaotic opening program presented at the Broward Center's
Amaturo Theatre showed signs of an increasing loss of focus
and organizational confusion. The featured soloists were a
violinist and a documentary filmmaker playing viola, with
Sunday's program offering a young jazz prodigy. Increasingly,
it seems the Miami Piano Festival is losing its sense of mission
and getting away from the classical piano repertoire for which
it was created.
Thursday's hectic program was more like a bit of performance
art at times, due to the debut of violinist Gilles Apap. With
the concert's first half running twice the scheduled length,
I had to leave at intermission to make an early deadline.
Yet Apap displayed enough staggering bravura and outsized
personality early on to show he is a remarkable violinist
of the first order, as well as a real character.
Dressed in black jeans and casual long shirts, Apap walked
on from the wings in darkness playing Bach's Partita in B
minor. After two movements, he segued into a series of Irish
fiddle reels, none of which was on the program.
Overlook the scruffy appearance, foot-stomping and other
Nigel Kennedy-isms and you'll hear some truly extraordinary
violin playing. His Bach was rendered with subtle bowing and
phrasing, and a lean, finely focused sound. The Irish dance
rhythms were tossed off with combustible rhythmic intensity
and verve.
Joined by pianist Eric Ferrand N'Kaoua, Apap was way over
the top in the "Blues" movement and finale of Ravel's
Sonata, which sounded unduly intense and violently overdone.
For Kochansky's arrangement of de Falla's Six Popular Spanish
Songs, the violinist brought a chair out and played sitting
cross-legged. Apap conjured the nocturnal poetry and virtuosic
swagger of these settings with whipcrack bowing and hairpin
vibrato, with a notably fiery Jota. Kreisler's transcription
of de Falla's Fire Dance was jaw-dropping in its technical
panache and brilliance, Apap rising to pace as he played,
kicking the chair out of his way. The French fiddler is a
wild man, but also a musician of huge talent and potential
when he doesn't let the excess get in the way of the music.
The evening began with Monsaingeon and Ferrand-N'Kaoua in
Brahms' Viola Sonata No. 1. Monsaingeon is the finest director
of classical documentaries in the world today, but as a musician
he's hardly on the same level. His amateurish performance
suffered from dry, malnourished viola timbre, early entrances,
and repeated wayward intonation.
The festival continues tonight at 8:15 with Francesco Libetta
and Ilya Itin in a duo-piano program. Tickets are $15-$50.
Call 954-462-0222.
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