Classical review: Gerstein performs Liszt's Transcendental Studies with knife-edge virtuosity

Russian pianist Kirill Gerstein. Photo / Marco Borggreve

Just 24 hours after his breathtaking Rachmaninov Third Piano Concerto with Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, Kirill Gerstein was at Auckland Museum's Fazioli, revealing the immense and more intimate rewards of the piano recital.

His programme had been fashioned with curatorial purpose, highlighting the purely musical pleasures to be found in works written with some pedagogical intent.

A pair of Chromatic Inventions from the final book of Bartok's Mikrokosmos had the tang of a tasty amuse bouche, as Gerstein deliberated over their jagged lines, before both capitulated into a runaway accelerando of anticipation.

Bach wrote his Three-Part Inventions to inspire cantabile playing and develop an appreciation of the finer points of composition.

Gerstein's cool, impeccably articulated approach gave higher priority to textural clarity, which worked brilliantly when he pursued the unswerving logic of the set's bubbling D major work.

A singing tone was reserved for the more reflective pieces, such as the Sarabande-like E flat major Invention, exquisitely ornamented.

After interval, we were privileged to hear all 12 of Liszt's Transcendental Studies, still, after 163 years, a veritable Everest of the pianist's repertoire.

These Etudes were written, however, not so much for the inculcation of technique in others, but for Liszt himself to flaunt his keyboard wizardry, capturing the shifting colours and moods of the new Romanticism on the piano.

It was an Olympian undertaking and the audiencewas stunned by Gerstein's hour of knife-edge virtuosity. Occasional slips were to be expected, and only Feux Follets somehow missed out on its perpetuum mobile intensity.

Elsewhere, one would gladly have cheered him through the circus-like thrills of Mazeppa, from dazzling cadenza to lusty marches.

At the other end of the scale, the gentler Ricordanza and Harmonies du soir recalled the immaculate taste and precision that had made Thursday's night's Rachamninov so memorable.

What: Kirill Gerstein
Where: Auckland Museum
When: Friday