San Francisco Classical Voice

It's one thing to be able to play the piano as well as Lilya Zilberstein demonstrated Saturday in Herbst Theater, but even that's only part way there. Missing in the Russian pianist's performance was the quality which captures the listener's ear and allows the music to take wing.

Bach's "Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D minor, the opening work, was played as if it were a Busoni or a Rachmaninoff transcription had either of them transcribed the piece or simply altered it to their performance style. Though there was probably not a missed note in her Liszt's "Six Consolations" and "Fantasy and Fugue on the name B-A-C-H," Zilberstein's playing was aimless and without temperament. What a price to pay for this kind of accuracy.

In Rachmaninoff's "Variations on a Theme of Corelli" and "Six Moments Musicaux," Zilberstein's tone was always lovely, especially in the mezzo-piano to mezzo-forte range. But because the playing was too obedient to an imaginary tick-tock of a metronomic beat, there was never a surge, a need to hurry the music along or to hold it back in tempo, the interpretive flexibility separating artist from routine player.

If San Francisco Performances, the city's premiere presenter after all, had chosen Zilberstein as one of 30 piano recitals this season, that would have been understandable. That she was one of only five however was saddening when you think of the many superb pianists in the world whom we are not hearing in San Francisco.

(Dino Gianopoulos is a concert pianist and teaches piano at the Department of Music at the University of California, Berkeley.)

©1999 Dino Gianopoulos, all rights reserved