Eteri
Andjaparidze in Recital
PSU's
2nd Annual Piano Festival Northwest,
World Forestry Center,
Friday, June 9.
Pianist Eteri Andjaparidze's father was the fine Russian
tenor Zurab Andjaparidze, and in listening to her recital
at this year's Piano Festival Northwest one got the sense
that there was much powerful singing around the dacha. In
a varied program that spanned 150 years of composition,
she showed herself a virtuosa of verve and flourish with
a rare sense of humor. Beginning with the Theme & Variations
in B-flat minor of the too little-heard Polish composer
Karol Szymanowski, Andjaparidze ravaged the keyboard like
a barely contained forest fire, throwing her small frame
into the attack with startling force. On Rachmaninoff's
Moments Musicaux, she could do no wrong. Barely hesitating
between the six movements, she pushed, prodded and forged
down the keyboard like the plummeting Russian ruble. She
took full license with the composer's allowance for improvisation,
pounding the keys with dramatic flourishes that never stooped
to mere rhapsodizing. As if to calm the storm--briefly--she
played the third movement with the poetic subtlety of Pasternak;
then back in the tempest's midst, applying the pedals as
if choking a billows, cutting off notes or sustaining them
for deep resonance. Though she later struggled with Haydn's
Sonata in C, her inclination for Romantic embellishment
somewhat stymied by its rigid complexities, she ended on
a playful high. Playing a set of the Satie-meets-Joplin
piano miniatures of the forgotten American Zez Confrey,
Andjaparidze again seemed to range free, exploring the keyboard
with rabid curiosity and seat-of-the-pants skill.
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Willamette Week | originally
published April 26,
2000
|
