[Yuliya's Performances] Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto # 1 Reviewed

[Ted Slusarczyk]

Dear Friends,

I am sending you the review of my performance of Tchaikovsky's Piano 
Concerto # 1.  The review appeard in the Roanoke Times 
(http://www.roanoke.com) today, Jan. 19.


________________________________

Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Piano professor's playing delightful
By Seth Williamson
981-3341
The Roanoke Times

The Roanoke Symphony Orchestra has had many fine soloists in the decades 
I've been attending concerts. Among the best have been icy technicians who 
can play anything set before them, passionate lovers of their instruments, 
difficult prima donnas and personable human beings.

But none has played with the joie de vivre displayed Monday night by pianist 
Yuliya Gorenman. The young Russian-born American artist, who is professor of 
piano at American University in Washington, D.C., played the Piano Concerto 
No. 1 of Peter Tchaikovsky with a muscular joy that was a pleasure to hear. 
If her appearance with David Wiley and the orchestra at the Roanoke 
Performing Arts Theatre is any indication, she loves performing more than 
anything else, and it would take a difficult audience indeed not to be swept 
away by her happiness in being at the keyboard.

It was probably no coincidence that she ended the concert with more encores 
than I can remember hearing from any RSO soloist in over two decades. She 
reeled off four (count 'em, four) solo piano treats after the Tchaikovsky 
came to a thunderous close, and gave the distinct impression that she could 
have kept at it all night if her audience didn't have to get home to bed on 
a work night.

Monday night's three-warhorse program began with Bedrich Smetana's reliable 
tone poem "The Moldau." This is a musical depiction of the great river that 
flows across Bohemia and eventually into Prague, and it is a miracle of 
Czech melodiousness from beginning to end. This performance was notable for 
beautiful work from the RSO's horn section, which played the horn calls 
thrillingly (where the river flows past a hunting party).

The musical heart of the evening was a full-bodied performance of the 
"Enigma Variations" by Sir Edward Elgar, a piece that was recognized from 
the night of its first hearing as an undoubted masterpiece. As these 
variations progressed - all of them depictions of members of Elgar's own 
circle of family and friends - a sense of cumulative power and control began 
to emerge. The RSO is a fine orchestra for as small a region as Roanoke, but 
in this performance I seemed to detect a depth of interpretive insight that 
equals readings I have heard from far better known ensembles and conductors.

This was especially obvious in the "Nimrod" variation, which is the heart of 
this piece, as the Variations themselves were the heart of this program. 
This music shines with a nobility and humanity that rank it among the most 
deeply moving pieces ever written by any composer in any era. Though he was 
to create many more great works, in a sense Elgar (nor anybody else in the 
20th century) never surpassed the sustained nobility of utterance he 
achieved here.

I am happy to say that Wiley and the RSO players responded to Elgar's 
vision. As they entered this magical section, Wiley barely seemed to move, 
communicating with only the smallest gestures and facial expressions. It was 
a performance fine enough to summon tears, and I have to rank it among the 
best moments I have heard from this orchestra in two decades. It was no 
surprise to learn that the RSO musicians dedicated their performance of this 
section of the work to the memory of the tsunami victims in the Indian 
Ocean.

After moments such as this "Nimrod," the Tchaikovsky that followed in the 
second half - as tuneful an audience pleaser as it is - seemed perhaps just 
the slightest bit vulgar. Placing it after this Elgar was asking too much of 
it. But as Yuliya Gorenman leaned into the crashing opening chords, she made 
it easier to get into the sound world of this piece, full of great melodies 
and emotionalism.

Gorenman played with athletic power - getting successfully from one end of 
this concerto to the other makes huge physical demands on the soloist. But 
her strength is probably what enabled her to handle the difficult passage 
work as clearly as she did. And she was a master at creating tension with 
judicious touches of rubato, slightly retarding the melodic line here, 
making up the time a bar or two later.

It was a performance that transcended the usual crashing and banging that 
devotees of this piece must accustom themselves to. The audience recognized 
this with an immediate standing ovation, recalling Gorenman to the stage 
several times. She rewarded them with four encores: Debussy's beloved "Clair 
de Lune," the Rachmaninov C-sharp Minor Prelude, the Nocturne for the Left 
Hand of Aleksandr Scriabin, and finally a Bach prelude.

Seth Williamson produces feature news stories and Morning Classics at public 
radio station WVTF (89.1 FM) in Roanoke.