A review of the concert on November 6, 1999 by Dr. Thomas Wendel.
The music lovers who attended the overwhelming Bay Area premier of pianist Andrew Russo were fortunate indeed. This tall thin young man made an impression at the Petit Trianon that could not have been dissimilar from the impression the young Franz Liszt made in the salons of Europe. Russo’s technique is Lisztian: there is no other word for it. He plays with passion, terrific strength, and where called for, a lilting grace. A true romantic, Russo is unafraid of the sustaining pedal. He is a true pianistic colorist. There is no doubt the world will soon take his measure.
Russo artfully opened and closed his program with selections from the composer-arranged ballet scores of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet and Stravinsky’s Petrouchka. The latter, particularly, is a knuckle-breaking virtuosic show-piece. Russo easily met both works’ daunting technical challenges while at the same time giving sensitive musical characterizations of the two dramas. In Petrouchka, Russo’s depiction of the opening street fair was particularly, not to say appropriately, intoxicating.
Chopin’s Barcarole in F-sharp major followed the Prokofiev. Here Russo showed in particular his command of legato playing, again much underlined by the generous use of the sustaining pedal. But for this listener, and clearly for many others in the audience, Russo’s reading of Schubert’s great Fantasie in C Major, The Wanderer Fantasie, was the highlight of the entire program. From the opening vitally energetic theme to the magnificent fugal close, the piece was nothing short of hair raising. For this work, Russo received a well-earned standing ovation.
After that storm, we needed the following intermission to climb down from the heights of the Fantasie’s virtuosic drama. Following intermission, Russo’s playing of two pieces from Albeniz’s Iberia served further to calm the atmosphere. Evocacion in particular is clearly derived from the impressionism of Claude Debussy, whom Albeniz knew in Paris. The livelier El Puerto, though also an impressionistic sketch contains, la Manuel de Falla, typically Andalusian themes and rhythms, all beautifully communicated by the pianist.
The recital ended with the rousing Petrouchka music which once more brought the audience to its feet. There followed two encores. The first was Chopin’s lovely Andante Spianoto, a separate work in itself though intended by Chopin to precede the Grande Polonaise Brilliant in E flat. And finally, and again appropriately, the second encore was a short, amusing, even faintly jazzy piece by Darius Milhaud — your reviewer’s French not quite agile enough to catch the softly announced title.
