A review of the concert on October 30, 2005 by Richard Scheinin.

She goes for the Marilyn Monroe look, bleached blond and sultry, in backless, off-the-shoulder gowns. He resembles a bespectacled Harry Potter, grown up to be a gray-suited actuary.

Olga Kern and Alexander Kobrin, both pianists, both Russians, both half-time Moscow residents, seem to inhabit separate personality universes but share a lot. Including this: Both are gold medal winners of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, a musical Olympics held once every four years for prodigiously talented up-and-coming performing artists.

Kern — just Olga to her fans — won gold in 2001 in Fort Worth, Texas, the competition’s home. She is 30.

Kobrin is this year’s winner, crowned in June. He’s 25. Both are on tour. Both performed locally over the weekend.

I went to hear both Sunday, seeking to find out if they play as differently as they look. They do.

Kobrin made his Bay Area debut at a sold-out Stanford Lively Arts performance at Dinkelspiel Auditorium on the Stanford campus. Stepping briskly out onto the stage, he was the picture of conservatism in gray suit, white shirt, and bow tie — but not so poker-faced as he’s been made out to be in the media blitz that followed his victory. He offered a small, shy smile, a quick bow, then sat down and played.

He can play.

He blew the dust off Haydn’s Piano Sonata No. 53 in B minor, revealing something immediately tuneful, charming and fresh. There was a spring to his bass notes, a lean zipping rightness to his right-handed passages. The music seemed unrushed, beautifully shaped, full of great songs. Anyone, even non-classical music people who think Haydn is boring, would like the way this guy plays, I thought.

I know such judgments shouldn’t be made too soon and that many Van Cliburn winners have been forgotten. But I felt pulled inside the music and thought Kobrin to be a poetic player. My impression didn’t change with his rendering of Schumann’s “Symphonic Etudes.”

This was swimmingly clear music; I imagined his fingers moving under the surface of calm waters or behind a spotless pane of glass. There was a sense of balance to it, of equipoise, whether Kobrin was playing rippling arpeggios, clipped march rhythms or tensile crescendos.

Something must be wrong, I thought at intermission.
Had he used too much pedal on parts of the Schumann, making the music boomy? Not really. Not enough to complain about. Had he struggled during any of Schumann’s hyper-technical passages? Maybe there been a trace of tension in the fingers of Kobrin’s right hand that made him strain a little? Possibly. But it hadn’t really harmed the music. Maybe it had helped it. Struggle isn’t a bad thing.

After intermission, he performed Chopin’s 24 Preludes, Op. 28 — the whole cycle, an accomplishment. The famous first prelude seemed rhythmically mechanical, but then Kobrin settled in for this formidable series of miniatures through which Chopin explored introspective depths.

I jotted quick notes as Kobrin advanced through the cycle: “sounds like dark thoughts,” “clear moonlight,” “liquid,” “he isn’t sappy,” “trance-like, opiated,” “funereal,” “pitter patter of rain; you hear every drop, distinctly.”

The audience gave him a standing ovation, and he deserved it. Kobrin seems headed somewhere — to Israel for one thing; his wife is expecting their first child in Tel Aviv. (Kobrin also teaches at a conservatory in Moscow, his hometown).

But will he be a star? With his low-key persona, Kobrin isn’t exactly fodder for the hard-sell that grips the classical music industry. Even so, one thing seems certain; his playing will continue to ripen. He is an honest musician.

Leaving Dinkelspiel before the encores, I ran to my car and flew down Interstate 280 to downtown San Jose, where Kern had already begun performing at Le Petit Trianon, the cozy concert hall where the Steinway Society puts on an exceptional series of recitals.

This one was almost half-over by the time I arrived. I sneaked into the hall’s tiny balcony and looked down at Kern in her backless, sleeveless, flaming red gown, gobbling up the final gazillion notes of Brahms’
Variations on a Theme by Paganini. Her hands looked like scurrying crabs — with pneumatic drills for legs.

Tall and lanky, Kern is a piano powerhouse with mega-chops; no question about her ability to pull off anything. She exudes control. At intermission, a music student in the audience said he found her technique to be “robotic,” but in service of her musical interpretations, which he called “awesome.” In the Trianon courtyard, where drinks were being served, one man exclaimed, “That’s one pianist who doesn’t suffer from performance anxiety.”

The pianist seems to have a modest but growing cult of personality around her, of the sort that usually develops around opera stars — or pop stars. And there is a story behind this. In 1997, when Kern first entered the Van Cliburn competition, she had dark, medium-length hair in bangs, parted in the middle. She didn’t dress to kill. She also didn’t make much headway in the competition.

For her 2001 return, she had a makeover: new haircut, new hair color, new gowns and a flashier repertoire. She has said as much in interviews; she wanted to be “new.” She even had a new baby, a boy named Vladislav. (He is now 7, living much of the time with Kern’s mother in Moscow, and plays the piano. Kern, divorced and a single mother, lives part-time in Moscow, part-time in New York).

Music flows in her veins. Her father is pianist for the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra, her mother a piano teacher, her brother, Vladimir, a conductor. (Kobrin grew up with Vladimir in Moscow and has known Kern since he was young). Her great-grandmother was a mezzo-soprano who sang with Rachmaninoff. Her great-great grandmother was a friend of Tchaikovsky.

And Kern performs with the confidence that comes from being part of this lineage. Sunday, as everyone was seated for the program’s second half, Kern emerged in a different backless, sleeveless gown, this one aquamarine with gold sequins. The hall was just about sold out (Kern also performed there Saturday night), and the crowd broke into applause.

She smiled warmly, sat and played. First came Chopin’s Fantasie in F minor, Op. 49. Kern played with steel-banded strength and definition. I imagined each chord, each note, leaving an invisible indelible imprint on the keyboard. There was a forward-driving sense of inevitability to her performance; Kern knows where she’s going and how she’s going to get there.
And she never misses the bus.

She also seems hyper-aware of what’s happening out in the hall, as well as in the music. During a quiet stretch of the Fantasie, a man broke out in a coughing fit, and a steady high-pitched noise outside the hall, or in the rafters, became distracting. Kern turned her head 90 degrees toward the audience, and stared out, wide-eyed, her mouth slightly agape, as if transfixed: “Come back,” she seemed to silently instruct the crowd. There was no break in the flow of the music, and the audience grew attentive once again.

She is a mature artist and a technician in a way that Kobrin is not. Yet I found myself thinking that her playing seemed infallible, but not breathtaking. During the first movement of Rachmaninoff’s Sonata No. 2 in B-flat major, I had the sense that she had tamed the music; that it was serving her, and not the other way around. On the other hand, she moved artfully from the Rachmaninoff — which can be harsh, almost savage — to a playful series of gauzy, filigreed encores that the crowd ate up.

Kern is an entertainer as well as an artist and has much to teach Kobrin in that regard. But if I had to give a special gold medal to one or the other, I’d give it to Kobrin. The music seemed to speak through him in a way that it didn’t with Kern.

At least on Sunday.

*Competition began in 1962, during Cold War*

The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition has roots in the Cold War: In 1958, American pianist Van Cliburn, a Texan, performed in Russia, winning first prize at the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Competition. He returned home a hero. New York gave him a ticker tape parade.

In 1962, a group of music teachers and residents from Fort Worth, Texas, established the competition in his name. Held every four years since (once, in 1969, it was held after only three), it brings together many of the best young players for two and a half weeks of
performances: alone, with chamber ensembles, and with orchestra.

This year’s competition, the 12th, was held at Fort Worth’s Bass Performance Hall. Thirty-five participants from 13 countries (whittled down from hundreds of accomplished applicants) performed for jurors. Alexander Kobrin, a bespectacled 25-year-old Russian with a resemblance to Harry Potter, was given the gold medal in June. He received a $20,000 cash prize, a recording contract with the Harmonia Mundi label and three years of international artist management and concert dates.

Oddly, few past winners have gone on to top-rank international careers; the Romanian Radu Lupu may be the only one. But many fine pianists have emerged after winning the gold, including Olga Kern and San Jose’s Jon Nakamatsu. Other exceptional artists who were Van Cliburn finalists include Jeffrey Kahane, Christopher O’Riley, Rudolf Buchbinder, and Christopher Taylor.