Evgeny Kissin, once a brilliant virtuoso, is now a superb musician.  His
all-Chopin recital in Davies Hall tonight was an Event with a capital E
and that rhymes with mystery.

How can this unsmiling, stiff, Harpo-haired, distant, awkward 28-year-old
create and sustain magic like this? Stranger yet, enchanting a listener
for whom a little Chopin goes a long way.  Kissin's Chopin for me tonight
ranks with Bernstein's Mahler and Balanchine's Stravinsky: he `opened'
and glorified music for me that seldom had visceral impact before.

You've got to trust the man: non-flashy, unsentimental, non-idiosyncratic,
Kissin plays in a straightforward, absolutely secure manner, the piano
disappearing, the music filling the hall.  In the case of Davies, that's
a barn of a hall to fill, not only seating 3,000, but still (even after
reconstruction) with a cathedral-like shape and size.  And yet, Kissin
made it sound *intimate*, the hushed sound suppressing almost all of the
unfortunate winter coughers.

Kissin doesn't program for the Marketing Department.  He plays what he
wants to play.  In the event, it was *all* of the Twenty-Four Preludes,
Op. 28 -- not just No. 7 ("Les Sylphides") or No. 15 ("Raindrop").
It was the whole work, magnificently played, with the tiniest of pauses
in-between.

Michael Steinberg, always a great program annotator, outdid himself tonight
explaining the point of Op. 28 (after a brief, colorful description of the
scene on Majorca, with George Sand in attendance of the already very ill
Chopin in 1838) --

   "The idea had been to create a book of 24 pieces, on in each major
   and minor key.  The model was Bach's `Well-Tempered Clavier,' music
   Chopin knew and loved deeply.

   "The difference in design is twofold.  Bach's preludes actually
   function as preludes; that is, each introduces a gugue in the same
   key.  As for the 24 keys, Bach, beginning in C major and climbing up
   the chromatic scale step by step, follows each piece in major with
   one in minor on the same keynote, i.e., C major, C minor, C-sharp
   major, C-sharp minor, and so on.

   "Chopin proceeds by fifths and follows each major key with its relative
   minor, i.e., C Major, A minor, G major, E minor, and so forth.'

   "Chopin knew exactly why he chose this design.  If you play the Bach
   pieces in sequence, each transition is, harmonically, a step into a
   foreign land; in Chopin's order, the harmonic relationships are close,
   and it is on that closeness that he is able to build some of his most
   dramatic effects as moves from character to character, from mood to
   mood."

I can't remember the last time witnessing a flawless performance on the
order of Kissin's tonight, of this impossibly difficult, tricky work of
great contrasts, of an incredible range of emotions, "a single instrument
speaking the language of infinity" (Sand).

And then, it got better.  The Barcarolle in F-sharp major soared and sang,
peaked and carried away.  Then the Sonata No. 2, Op. 35.  The last time
I heard it, I wasn't particularly caught up in it; this time, I sat at the
edge of my seat, totally absorbed.  Kissin played the end of the first
movement ("dissonances through dissonances within dissonances," Schumann
complained) in such a way that it sounded something Liszt could have
achieved...  if only he applied himself.

The Scherzo was sheer bliss, the Funeral March something I never heard
before (and so it was throughout the evening, Kissin inventing the music
note by note), and the Finale just plain unbelievable.  Steinberg quotes
Schumann's 1841 review ("it's mockery, not music") to render his own
opinion which, *tonight*, I completely agree with -- "This
minute-and-a-half of music is one of the Romantics' most haunting
triumphs."

A Chopin waltz and etude for encores, stiff, unsmiling bows, and the
magician was gone.  In all the years of concert-going, few matched the
consistent greatness of tonight.

Janos Gereben/SF
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