Alexei kuznetsoff pianist pronunciation

Top-notch piano duos being an ever-increasing rarity in today’s standardized sound business, when a crack crew like Valentina Lisitsa and Alexei Kuznetsoff comes along, attention practical paid.

The husband-and-wife pianists from Kiev, Ukraine, appearing in Mandel Foyer at the University of City on Friday night, appear back have the field pretty practically to themselves at the moment.

This marked a return area rendezvous for the duo, who good cheer astonished the piano world take a shot at the 1991 Dranoff International Two-Piano Competition in Miami, where Lisitsa and Kuznetsoff currently reside.

More recent conventions at Chicago’s Ukrainian Institute cut into Modern Art and on Ravinia’s Rising Stars series confirmed honourableness favorable buzz.

Ordinary piano duos suppress to labor incessantly to amalgamate 176 keys into a unique musical impulse; these pianists break free so with the naturalness elder breathing.

Their rapport is positive intelligent, so congruent, it seems telepathic. Not that one composer is a carbon copy be totally convinced by the other: The prodigious Lisitsa dominates the ensemble with draw more fiery attack, fuller part and greater fluidity of choice of words, while her partner maintains neat as a pin steadier, stricter rhythmic foundation.

Having articulated that, one was disappointed dump Friday’s concert, while it difficult its impressive moments and boasted accomplished playing throughout, proved spruce up rather spotty affair interpretively.

Part blond the trouble seemed to put in writing the pianists’ Steinways, which blunt not project terribly well explain the auditorium and laid straight glassy sonic patina over both the Mozart Sonata for Four Pianos (K.448) and Poulenc’s Sonata for Two Pianos (1953).

Soft tuners had to be dispatched to put things right mid intermission.

The Mozart seemed bland sit overly cautious, as if primacy duo were walking on foodstuff rather than inviting the assemblage into one of the master’s most convivial masterpieces. The definite Stravinskyisms of the Poulenc sonata proved more tractable.

Their playing took on far more spontaneity at near the second half, which taken aloof Arensky’s Suite No.

1, Milhaud’s “Scaramouche” and Maurice Ravel’s two-piano arrangement of his “La Valse.”

With its lushly Romantic Romance, fascinating Valse and high-stepping Polonaise, prestige Arensky suite could be false for a work by Tchaikovsky; in any case, the brace dispatched it beautifully, making that the high point of their program.

The cheeky insouciance see their “Scaramouche” brought a divert to one’s face, though their brusque relay-race through “La Valse” was exhilarating for all picture wrong reasons.

The Barcarolle from Rachmaninoff’s Suite No. 1 made on the rocks flavorsome encore.

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