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RECITAL REVIEW
Taking the Duel Out Of The Duo
January 5, 2000
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By James Carmichael
The two-piano recital of Jerry Kuderna and Vera Breheda last Wednesday
would have been better served had it lived up to its unfortunate "Dueling Pianos" billing. This well-planned recital by two very accomplished players on the Julia Morgan month-long "Music Masters" series was, to paraphrase the old saw, so good it should have been better.
Robert Schumann's Six Canonic Etudes, transcribed from the original for pedal piano by Debussy, in Kuderna's and Breheda's expressively muted, almost distant, approach, worked well with the gentle polyphony of the studies. This music is so "inward" that even when it becomes more animated, the excitement seems to be that of a contained secret.
At first I marveled at the transparent textures and precise ensemble of the
Stravinsky Concerto for 2 Solo Pianos, with perfectly chosen tempos to
heighten my enjoyment. But here it gradually became apparent that Kuderna's
effort to match Breheda's less overt playing style was resulting in too
homogenous a texture. At first I wondered if the discrepancy in piano size
and tone were the problem-- Kuderna played a lidless seven-foot grand placed in
front of Breheda's open-lidded concert grand. Developments later in the
program made it clear that this wasn't the issue. It was all there but the
accents.
I think that Robert Helps' Eventually The Carousel Begins works best if the
main body of the piece can be heard as a spinning out of the resonance of
its explosive beginning. An otherwise beautifully rendered performance just
needed more oomph at the beginning.
The needed oomph began to show up in the Rachmaninoff Suite No. 2, Op. 17.
Kuderna began to play at higher "temperature," etching big lines more
assertively and giving satisfying voice to Rachmaninoff's long romantic
melodies. If only Breheda had been more willing to go with him in the Un
poco piu mosso of the Romance, where he almost pulled away from her.
Matching two pianists into an ensemble has to be one of the most difficult
enterprises in chamber music. With more "dueling" in the their duo, the
team of Kuderna and Breheda could turn out to be something special.
(James Carmichael, pianist, lives and teaches in the East Bay.)
©2000 James Carmichael, all rights reserved
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