Miami Piano Festival > Press Releases 2005

By Lawrence A. Johnson
Classical Music Writer

May 16, 2005

At intermission Friday night, a burly audience member in an open-necked shirt approached Miami International Piano Festival artistic director Giselle Brodsky. The man had heard the evening's artist last month at the Arthur Rubinstein Competition in Israel, but had to miss the final round due to an army assignment. "I want to thank you for bringing Alexander Gavrylyuk to Miami," he said.

Others in the Lincoln Theatre appeared grateful as well. First-place winner of the Rubinstein Competition, Gavrylyuk opened the festival's Discovery Series Friday night in Miami Beach with a dazzling display of keyboard power and brilliance.

It's easy to see what so impressed the judges in Israel. The 20-year-old Ukrainian pianist possesses an awe-inspiring technique, displaying the strength and iron-fingered articulation to tackle even the most tortuous passages with remarkable power and clarity.

Gavrylyuk opened the evening with Haydn's Sonata No. 47 in B minor. Fleet and stylish, the pianist held the music's elegance and scintillating wit in a dexterous balance. Gavrylyuk found a rapt delicacy in the central minuet and threw off the rapid-fire notes of the Presto with exhilarating bravura.

Brahms' knuckle-busting Paganini Variations takes its inspiration from Paganini's 24th Caprice, the same theme that Rachmaninoff mined for his celebrated Rhapsody. Cast in two "Books" spanning 35 variations, Brahms' score is a perilous minefield for even the most gifted players.

Gavrylyuk showed a firm control of the vast architecture keeping a strong momentum and cumulative excitement to the fore. His performance was remarkable for its power and accuracy, with Gavrylyuk surmounting the running octaves, opposite-running passages and glissandi with velocity and diamond-bright precision.

The Paganini Variations is Brahms' most virtuosic piano work yet, though Gavrylyuk's playing was often thrilling, there was a tendency to slight the less flashy variations and reflective moments. This inability to connect with a gentler, deeper expressive universe became more palpable in a pair of Russian sonatas in which one thought he would be in his element.

To be sure, the pianist's aggressive virtuosity was well suited to most of Prokofiev's Sonata No. 6. In this first of Prokofiev's three "war sonatas," Gavrylyuk's explosive style and spring-loaded volatility was fully in synch with the brutal inexorable propulsion of the outer movements.

Yet too often the pianist's steely, unyielding approach relied on whipping up mere sonic volume and speed. His straight-faced take on the Allegretto overlooked its mordant humor and in the third movement Gavrylyuk's tense, impatient style completely missed the fragile lyricism of the slow waltz.

Scriabin's Sonata No. 5 suffered from the same approach, with Gavrylyuk's cold blast of relentless virtuosity quickly dissipating the perfumed mists of Scriabin's languid sensuality.