Jerry Kuderna

Jerry Kuderna is a pianist who gives lecture/recitals every Friday at the Berkeley Arts festival.

Articles By This Author

Jerry Kuderna - March 22, 2011

Cantare Chorale met the massive challenges Beethoven posed in his shattering Missa Solemnis, with the chorus and soloists ranging from inspiring to sublime.

Jerry Kuderna - February 28, 2011

What sacred music do you set alongside Mozart’s great Requiem in a concert? The San Francisco Symphony movingly squared the circle Thursday with works by Morton Feldman and Mindaugas Urbaitis.

Jerry Kuderna - February 14, 2011

Hélène Grimaud’s new solo disc Resonances comprises the recital program she has been touring this past season. It is a welcome change to find a pianist willing to risk the juxtaposition of Mozart and Berg.

Jerry Kuderna - October 26, 2010

If you wanted to come up with a pairing of diametric opposites on a piano recital, you might choose the complete Ligeti Études and Bach’s Goldberg Variations, two monumental works that at first glance seem psychologically light years apart. This was Jeremy Denk’s Bay Area solo debut program. It promised to be an auspicious one, and I couldn’t wait to see if he would pull it off.

Jerry Kuderna - October 12, 2010

It seemed an exciting if daunting prospect: hearing all of Beethoven’s cello sonatas at one sitting. Chamber music has a way of enlivening performers and audiences, and of inspiring them in ways that the solo and concerto literature, with its focus on the individual artist, often can’t. Cal Performances gave us the chance to witness Beethoven’s development from kid-wonder to the visionary master he was to become.

Jerry Kuderna - April 26, 2010

As every classical music lover knows by now, this is a big anniversary year for Chopin and Schumann. Still, somehow we are never quite prepared to fully comprehend their vast achievements as composers for the piano. Emanuel Ax’s recital at Davies Symphony Hall Sunday showed how difficult it is to reconcile these two giants of the Romantic period.

Jerry Kuderna - March 22, 2010
From the hauntingly tentative first notes, or rather the first words of a poem prefacing the Brahms Requiem sung Saturday by the powerful but always beautifully balanced and expressive Cantare Chorale led by Artistic Director David Morales, I knew I was about to have a unique experience. I was to have a window not only into Johannes Brahms
Jerry Kuderna - January 11, 2010
Garrick Ohlsson’s credentials as an interpreter of Frédéric Chopin — he has recorded the complete works, twice — place him in the top echelon of modern pianists. Many performers possess the technical prowess and power to treat the piano as a slave and to do pretty much as they please to the music.
Jerry Kuderna - November 2, 2009
Maybe it was the Halloween season, or the full moon, or just because he could. Presented by Cal Performances, pianist Louis Lortie’s recital Sunday at Hertz Hall was composed of works having something to do with diabolical virtuosity.
Jerry Kuderna - August 3, 2009
“We are looking for someone who will touch us deeply, in a way that we cannot forget.” These words, spoken by the pianist Menahem Pressler in a documentary about the Van Cliburn competition, came to mind while listening to his solo recital at this summer’s Music@Menlo Festival.