By Alan Becker Special Correspondent Posted May 25
The grand finale of the eighth annual Miami International Piano Festival was a thing of sound and fury.
In this case, it signified a Lisztian extravaganza in which razzle-dazzle and technical legerdemain held the high ground. Were it not for the reduced string forces of the festival orchestra the already impressive decibel level would have been even higher Sunday night.
Miami Beach's Lincoln Theatre, with its up-close and unforgiving sound, isn't an ideal venue in which to hear the composer's works for piano and orchestra, and the general lack of restraint weighed heavily on the ears. The Concerto No. 1 in E flat fell to Croatian pianist Kemal Gekic, who also performed Liszt's rarely heard solo transcription of Rossini's William Tell Overture. It was interesting to contrast the original version, played first by the orchestra, with that for piano solo. Gekic made a meal of the piece and pulled out all the stops. Conductor William Noll was of like mind and held nothing back in his interpretation of this favorite.
The concerto is an interesting example of thematic metamorphosis in which movements are linked in unusual ways. It is tightly organized, wastes little time in the unfolding of ideas, and quickly returns to its roots during the cyclic final measures. Any pianist would be foolish to attempt to underplay the bravura, and Gekic seized the moment to show off all of his technical skills. Unfortunately, the results often seemed fussy, and momentum was frequently lost by narcissistic attention to the trees instead of the forest.
Russian pianist Ilya Itin fared much better in the Concerto No. 2. His attempts at subtle phrasing flowed smoothly and naturally. Only the paucity of strings and the overbalanced brass and woodwinds gave cause for concern, although the single multi-sectional form could have been better organized by more orchestra rehearsal.
The last, but not least, pianist was Francesco Libetta, who treated the Fantasia on Hungarian Folk Tunes to an unusually subdued reading. If the final section held less frisson than others have brought to this music, the playing on the whole was refreshing and would have stirred patriots to visions of the Hungarian plains.
