Pianist Kevin Kenner appeared
last night in a recital at Le Petit Trianon Theater in San Jose, sponsored
by the Bay Area Steinway Society. Last night’s concert revealed that he has
a brilliant technique and can play quite artistically, when he chooses to.
It also needs to be said that
he bangs louder than any pianist I have ever heard in fifty years of
attending recitals. It was as
though Mr. Kenner, a resident of London, took a mental wrong turn last night
and imagined he was performing for 8,000 at the Royal Albert Hall, rather
than 300 at Le Petit Trianon, an extremely live acoustical environment.
Initially we were seated in press seats in the front row, seven feet from
the piano, where the pounding was so painful we moved after intermission to
the last row against the back wall. Even at the greatest possible distance
from the stage, the sound at highest volume levels (and there were a lot of
these) was so harsh and strident that the piano produced metallic jangling
sounds that were unpleasant and unmusical. And yet in every piece that
contained quieter moments, Kenner demonstrated his artistic sensibilities
and revealed that he can shape a phrase with a beauty and refinement that
would earn the respect of any musician alive today.
Opening the recital was
Mozart’s Sonata in F major, K. 332. The first movement of this sonata
received a heavy handed performance (sort of Mozart in the style of
Beethoven) that was more robust than elegant — yet his beautifully refined
slow movement was elegant.
The last movement was overly fast and glib (sort of Mozart in the
style of Mendelssohn at his fastest and most brilliant). I had the
impression that at Carnegie Hall for an audience of 2,600, this performance
would have been quite satisfying, although it was a slightly overwhelming
for an audience of 300 at Le Petit Trianon.
Rounding off the first half
of the program was a group of works by Chopin that included the three
Mazurkas of Op. 59, the two Polonaises of Op. 40 and the great Polonaise in
F-sharp minor, Op. 44. When he was playing softly or moderately loud,
Kenner’s playing was impressive and poetic, but the lapses into relentless pounding
frequently caused me to wince with pain at the assault on my ears.
After intermission, we heard
Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, Op. 12.
The quieter, more reflective pieces,
Des Abends, Warum and parts of
Ende vom Lied, were lovely.
Elsewhere loud passages (played with the all-out percussive quality of "The
Great Gate of Kiev" from Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition) became unbearably strident and unpleasant.
Ending
the concert were two works by Paderewski. The first of these is a gem — the
Nocturne in B-flat major, Op. 16 — and here it received a
lovely and charming performance.
The last piece on the program, Paderewski’s
Dans le Desert, was a truly weird
piece. It was often a toccata in which Kenner would put his foot down on the
damper pedal and wail away, building in the process unbelievably loud and
harsh sounding passages that went on seemingly forever. Every once in awhile
the texture calmed down and we heard some Yanni-like “New Age” noodling.
This piece was endless.
For an appreciative audience,
Kenner played one encore, the Chopin Waltz in A-flat major, Op. 69, No. 1.
It was lovely. The bottom line here is that Kenner is very gifted and can
play most sensitively, but seems to want to project the image of concert
pianist trying to impress us with his great technique.
Byron Janis, in a recent
interview in The Wall Street Journal, commented on the need for a
pianist to listen with great care to the instrument he is playing, and the
acoustics and ambient sounds of any hall in which he performs in order
constantly to make adjustments so that clarity of musical expression is
preserved. This was the true core of the problem in last night's recital.
The banging so distorted the music that clarity was often obliterated. We can only hope that
Kenner will put aside his obsession with proving his technical mastery and find his way back to the music itself.
End
