On Friday night, Evgeny Kissin played a recital in Carnegie Hall. He will repeat the program in another recital, in the same hall, this coming Wednesday. I have been reviewing concerts in New York since the 1990s. I don’t remember another time when a recitalist gave the same program in Carnegie Hall twice.
Mr. Kissin played, and will play, a wonderfully mixed program—a program without a theme and without politics (broadly speaking). Just a series of great or good piano works by four great composers.
All of these composers were pianists. Two of them were great pianists—Beethoven and Chopin—and two of them were good ones—Brahms and Prokofiev.
So, “just” a program of admirable and lovable piano works, the kind of program critics and administrators tend not to like, but that a musician of Mr. Kissin’s stature can get away with.
He began with Beethoven’s Sonata No. 27 in E minor, Op. 90. There are thirty-two Beethoven piano sonatas, not a loser in the bunch. But, in general, pianists program about half of them, at most. We especially hear those sonatas that have nicknames: “Pathétique,” “Waldstein,” “Appassionata,” etc. Kissin did a real service in programming the E-minor. It is almost never heard. It has just two movements, no more, which is unusual. And it is marvelous.
Kissin played the first movement with due intensity. He was very masculine, very Beethoven. This is not to say he lacked sensitivity. Beethoven was far from an insensitive man.
The second movement is a song (in E major). Some people say that Beethoven couldn’t write melodies. But, oh, this song! I want to call it “Schubertian.” But that would be putting the cart before the horse, so to speak. Was Schubert “Beethovenian”?
In my view, some of Kissin’s accents were out of place—a little blunt—but he handled this music with undeniable care and devotion. That’s the way he plays.
After the Beethoven came two pieces by Chopin—beginning with the Nocturne in F-sharp minor, Op. 48, No. 2. When I write about Kissin, as I have been doing for at least thirty years now, I repeat myself, necessarily. I often like things smoother than he does. I like this nocturne glassier. Kissin makes the water churn somewhat. But, again, his care and devotion are undeniable.
The next Chopin piece was the Fantasy in F minor, Op. 49. I felt like I was seeing an old friend. When I was coming of age—1970s, let’s say—the Fantasy was a staple. I have not heard it much in recent decades. Do people think it old-fashioned?
Speaking of old-fashioned, Kissin played the Fantasy in the grand style. It was noble and virtuosic. Kissin pedaled shrewdly, producing a variety of colors. He emphasized accidentals in an interesting, effective way. He hit a few clinkers—wrong notes—but this only proved that we were not listening to a studio recording, thank heaven.
The second half of the program began with Brahms: his Four Ballades, Op. 10. The first of these is in D minor and is known as the “Edward.” The nickname comes from the old Scottish tale, or ballad, that inspired Brahms here. The music is invested with the mystery of a distant past. It came out that way from Kissin’s fingers.
He is a “two-handed pianist,” as I sometimes say. What I mean is, the left hand is a fine singer, when it needs to be, and it is always a full participant.
The last of the Ballades, in B major, is a dreamy piece. When Mr. Kissin ended the piece on Friday night, a technical issue arose: the piano twanged. Sometimes, when a pianist lifts the sustain pedal, the instrument does that: twang. How to prevent this? Maybe we could take that up in a separate article . . .
Any lingering dreaminess in Carnegie Hall was broken up by the last piece on the printed program: Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 2 in D minor, Op. 14. Evgeny Kissin has been playing Prokofiev his whole life. (He has been playing the other three composers too, granted.) He has the propulsiveness, the percussiveness, the dynamism.
(Dictionaries have no entry for “propulsiveness.” I think they should.)
The pièce de résistance of the Sonata No. 2, for my money, is the Scherzo. It is so delicious—in a screwball, demonic way—it is sometimes used as an encore. Kissin did it justice.
He has been known to play encores deep into the night. On this night, he confined himself to three. He began with a Chopin mazurka. (I’m afraid I can’t remember which one. There are about sixty of them.) He demonstrated a sense of dance, and a sense of line. This was perhaps his most refined playing of the entire night.
Then there was more Prokofiev: the March from The Love for Three Oranges. Above, I mentioned “screwball and demonic.” Those qualities were called on again.
Mr. Kissin bade farewell with something gentle, almost a lullaby—it is a dance with a lullaby feeling, we might say: Brahms’s Waltz in A flat. The pianist was, again, refined. Elegant. Old World.
When recitalists play or sing encores, people try to record them with their phones. The ushers at Carnegie Hall patrol the aisles, to prevent this. This disturbs the audience and the atmosphere at large—this patrolling. What the solution is, I don’t know.