This Week in Classical Music-May 30, 2010

by: Randy Kinkel

May 30, 2010

Who's that Pianist?

( Phoenix, AZ )
•Who is Gerstein?
•Dudamel slapped by eastern Critics

This Week in Classical Music 5/30/10

It’s “This week in Classical Music”, an update on what’s happening in the classical music world; I’m Randy Kinkel.

Who’s the prize-winningest young pianist you’ve probably never heard of? Give up? Well, that honor belongs to 30-year-old Kirill Gerstein, who teaches in Germany and was born in Russia. In January, he was announced as this year's $300,000 Gilmore winner. Then in April, Lincoln Center conferred its Avery Fisher Career Grant, worth $25,000. The virtuoso was first attracted to Jazz, and studied at the jazz mecca Berklee School of music on a full scholarship, then later the Manhattan School of music. He says his jazz background gives him a unique perspective from other classically-trained pianists; “"The sense of timing, the enhanced attention to harmony—you hear things in a different way," he explains. "Through jazz you approach classical music with the sense that the score is not written in stone, but instead represents a symbolization of a certain possibility." Right now, he’s playing dates in Germany; he’ll be back here in the states for the Tanglewood Festival in July and then playing dates in California in September and October.

After his triumphant concert with the LA Philharmonic here in Phoenix, Gustavo Dudamel and the Band are getting a bit of a beat-down in the eastern press in places like Chicago, Philadelphia, and NYC. John von Rhein of the Chicago Tribune heard "half-formed interpretative ideas" that "betray a lack of musical depth." The New York Times' Anthony Tommasini said that Dudamel "pushed expressivity to extremes" and criticized the players technical skills. Philadelphia Inquirer critic Peter Dobrin wrote,. "I'd rather think that the Los Angeles board, administration, and players really believe they have a great musical thinker on their hands," he wrote. "But that's not who Dudamel is — not now, at 29, not Wednesday night in Verizon Hall." Arizona Republic critic Richard Nilsen, was kinder to the young conductor and his orchestra --. "You would have to be stone not to be shaken by it," He said about their performance of Mahler's First Symphony. “There is still the sense that L.A. is the place of the philistines," Nilsen told James Rainey from the Los Angeles times, "and that it can't be as good an orchestra as it is because the really good orchestras have to be in New York or Chicago or Cleveland. I'm sure there is at least a bit of East Coast snobbery involved." Dudamel and the Philharmonic closed their tour last weekend in New York.

For more on these and other items and events, go to the website, kbaq.org; be listening each week at this time for another update, and join me every weekday at noon for “The Mozart Buffet”, an hour of music by Mozart and his contemporaries; I’m Randy Kinkel for “This Week in Classical Music” on 89-five KBAQ Phoenix, a service of Rio Salado College and Arizona State University.