From the January 27, 1997 Arizona Daily Star and Starnet
Alban Gerhardt, cello, and Rina Dokshinsky, piano. Performed a Piano and Friends concert yesterday in the Tucson Convention Center Leo Rich Theatre.
By Ken Keuffel Jr.
The Arizona Daily Star
Alban Gerhardt, it seems, thrives in perilous situations.
The cellist appeared with pianist Rina Dokshinsky in yesterday's season-opening Piano and Friends concert at the Leo Rich Theatre. He played three of the literature's most demanding pieces: Brahms's Sonata in E Minor, opus 38; Beethoven's Sonata in A Major, opus 69; and Kodály's Sonata for Unaccompanied Cello, opus 8 (1915).
This program - especially the Kodály, a taxing piece that rivals Bach's suites for solo cello in its technical challenges - would surely have given even the most seasoned soloist pause. Gerhardt not only plunged into music fearlessly and performed it with consistent excellence; but he also did so the day after flying in from Berlin, his native city. What have you done lately?
Nancy Monsman, who wrote the program notes for yesterday's concert, is correct when she calls the Kodály, with its numerous multiple stops and passages simultaneously bowed and plucked, ``spectacularly difficult to play.'' Indeed, particularly in the final allegro movement, it's as if the Hungarian composer compressed all of the cello literature's hardest passages into one piece.
Not one of the aforementioned challenges gave Gerhardt any trouble; he conquered all of them, finding mystery in the adagio and unbridled intensity in the finale. The plucked passages danced. The parts featuring simultaneous bowing and plucking became clever little duets. And the most rhapsodic writing came to sound like feverish Gypsy music gone mad.
And most significant, his stamina struck me as phenomenal.
The Gerhardt-Dokshinsky collaboration didn't sound its best until the final movement of the Brahms, the performance's opening work. Until then, Dokshinsky seemed to hold back, content to play the role of the supportive and competent assistant and to let Gerhardt do most of the musical talking.
The pianist really broke out of her shell in the Beethoven, her playing enhancing the opening movement's explosive contrasts in mood. In the final movement, the oft-repeated figures she played imparted a feeling of an impending eruption.
Gerhardt's Beethoven and Brahms playing was memorable for its fine singing tone and even finer musical instincts. It always stayed attentive to the little things (e.g., contrasts in dynamics, subtle shifts in pace) that comprise a mighty whole.
Dokshinsky, an Israeli, played a work for solo piano. This was Rachmaninov's Piano Sonata No. 2, opus 36. Like other pieces by the Russian master, this work contains its share of crashing, full-bodied chords. Dokshinsky delivered all of them with conviction and the finest musical instincts; she never resorted to mere pounding. The slower middle movement came off with an easy-going grace.