Pianist Nakamatsu Meets Challenges

With separate concerts planned to feature each of the three medal winners of the 1997 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, and with gold medalist Jon Nakamatsu saved for last, excitement was high as the victor strode onto the stage at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre on Saturday night. His vehicle was Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Opus 18, famous for its power, its passion, its fistfuls of notes.

And if one listened carefully, one might just have heard all that too. But the spoils really went to the mighty sound system, which blasted out the notes of the Pacific Symphony with the trueness and quality of a 1910 cylinder recording and which miked every orchestral murmur as if it were a celestial pronouncement, all the while keeping the pianist’s amplification to a demure hush. As a result, conductor Carl St.Clair, who could not have been aware of any of this from the podium, unwittingly presided over a concerto for orchestra, with a very challenging, quiet piano obbligato.

Even under these conditions, however, Nakamatsu managed to convey an affinity for the work, along with the technical know-how and sensitivity to communicate his vision. He disclosed much tenderness, but avoided sloppy sentimentality. In audible passage work, one heard authority, focus and point.

All of this was rewarded with an immediate, screaming, standing ovation from the reported 7,775 in attendance. Happily, this brought the pianist out alone, to close the program with the Fantasie-Impromptu in C sharp minor, Opus 66, by Chopin, in a performance flanked by brittle, articulate runs and anchored by a fresh-faced, unhackneyed interpretation of the famous melody.

The first half of the concert had been devoted to three sets of dances. Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances, Opus 46, Nos. 1 and 8, and Brahms’ Hungarian Dances, Nos. 5, 1 and 21, gave the orchestra a chance to delve into Eastern European rhythms, while Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story” heated up the already sweltering evening with Latin and jazz patterns. Bernstein’s medley--programmed in honor of the 80th anniversary of his birth on Aug. 25--swayed with suave, tight precision. Too bad that whatever balance St.Clair had worked out found no sympathy from his sound engineers.