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SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL CONCERT REVIEW
Chopin: Kevin Kenner, piano, Estonian Concert Hall, Tallinn, 30.10.2010 (GF)
California-born Kevin Kenner was 2nd prize-winner – no first prize was awarded – at the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1990. Since then, he has had a busy career around the world and has a long discography, in which the music of Chopin plays an important part. He appeared in the Estonian Concert Hall as part of the piano festival ‘Klaver 2010’ with an all-Chopin recital, and the programming was very interesting.
The program was in four parts, with each part containing four pieces. The first three pieces in each part were from the years 1828 – 1830, i.e. compositions from the composer’s late teens. They were played without a pause between them. The fourth piece in each part was a scherzo, and these were given in chronological order, ending with the E Major Op. 54 from 1843.
Kenner turned out to be a true poet at the keyboard. He has a wonderful touch and revels in the most subtle of nuances without sounding mannered. Visually, too, he avoided big gestures, sitting slightly crouched over the keyboard. In the midst of this sensitive poetry, he could also muster powerful, even thunderous fortissimos and the four scherzi, which of course were the real masterpieces, were performed with the utmost brilliance and a fine sense for contrast.
The pieces from Chopin’s youth were several mazurkas, waltzes and a couple of polonaises, with an odd nocturne sprinkled in, and, the most delicious of all, Souvenir de Paganini in A Major from 1829, which most listeners recognise as variations on Carnival of Venice. More delicious piano playing is hard to imagine.
As an encore, Kenner played a poetic piece by the other great Polish piano virtuoso Paderewski. But the audience were not satisfied with that, and after violent applause, bravos and stamping of feet he offered nothing less than a riveting reading of Chopin’s Polonaise in A-flat. The auditorium was literally boiling with enthusiasm. The evening before, Evgeny Kissin had played a recital in the same hall. I can’t imagine even him playing better than Kevin Kenner.
Göran Forsling