Pianist Valentina Lisitsa performs in TWG Cultural Fund Music Series (04/11/04)

Pianist Valentina Lisitsa performs in TWG Cultural Fund Music Series

by Yaro Bihun

WASHINGTON - "... She has infallible fingers, imagination and a control of dynamics ... (her) technique glitters like cut glass...(her) soft passages were so delicate, you were afraid to breathe ... she does not settle for mere technical display, but makes genuine music. ..."

That is how the music critics of the Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun Times and the Sun Sentinel wrote about the artistry of pianist Valentina Lisitsa after her performances in their cities. And, judging by the exceptionally warm welcome she received during her recent appearance here, most, if not all, of the Washington-area audience would agree with them.

In her concert program on March 14 at the historic Lyceum in Old Town Alexandria, Va., the young, Ukrainian-born pianist took the audience on what she herself described as a musical tour of Europe, performing works of the continent's leading composers - from Bach to Liszt - and then brought the audience "home" with her to Ukraine, with Mykola Lysenko's Barcarolle.

The Sunday afternoon concert was the third in this season's Washington Group Cultural Fund Music Series. As in other concerts of this series, the printed program notes were limited to the artist and the featured Ukrainian composer. In this case, less turned out to be more for the audience, because it gave Ms. Lisitsa the opportunity to introduce each piece with here own personal observations and comments about the composers and their works, as well as to add historical and political background to a few of the pieces that needed it.

In the first half of the program, Ms. Lisitsa performed Bach's Partita No. 2 in C minor, Mozart's Variations on "Salve tu, Domine," and Beethoven's Sonata No. 23 in F minor ("Appasionata"), which, as she noted in her introduction, for some reason was a favorite of Lenin, or at least that is what she and other budding young Soviet pianists were told.

Introducing the Brahms's Two Rhapsodies, Op. 79, after intermission, Ms. Lisitsa recalled how her first American teacher, Harris Crohn, took her under his wing after she emigrated to the United States as a teenager in 1992. He strove to broaden her musical horizons beyond the Soviet-taught repertoire "one hears at international competitions," as she described it, to include, among others, the works of Brahms, which, in her youthful stubbornness, she said she would never do.

She said that she and her husband, pianist Alexei Kuznetsoff, planned to visit with Mr. Crohn after the concert, in Massachusetts, where he had retired and was ill, to personally tell him that she, indeed, had performed Brahms in concert. One day before the concert, however, they learned that he had died. She dedicated her performance of the Brahms Rhapsodies to his memory.

After Chopin's Polonaise-Fantasy in A-flat major and Ravel's "Gaspart de la Nuit," playing Lysenko was "like coming home" after a long journey, Ms. Lisitsa said; she expressed regret that her repertoire did not include many more of his works.

She concluded the program with Liszt's "Mazeppa," from "Ètudes d'Executions Transcendente," in which the Hungarian composer portrayed the independence struggle between Ukraine and Russia - a piece that, as she pointed out, understandably, was not performed in Soviet times. Ms. Lisitsa rewarded the audience's warm reception with three encores: Liszt's "La Companella" and "Second Hungarian Rhapsody," and Chopin's "Minute Waltz."

Welcoming the audience at the beginning of the concert, TWG Cultural Fund Director Laryssa Courtney indicated that the concert was dedicated to two of Ukraine's cultural giants whose birthdays are celebrated in March - poet Taras Shevchenko, who breathed life into the Ukrainian language and literature in the 19th century, and Mykola Lysenko, the featured composer who is known as the father of the Ukrainian national school of music.

In attendance at the concert was Ukraine's ambassador to the U.S., Mykhailo Reznik and his wife, Iryna. The TWG Cultural Fund's Music Series is conducted under the patronage of the Embassy of Ukraine, and Mrs. Reznik, as have her predecessors, serves as the fund's honorary chairperson.

Ms. Lisitsa started performing on stage at the age of 4 and, at 7, earned a scholarship to the Kyiv Conservatory. Since moving to the United States and her debut at the Mostly Mozart Festival at the Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall, she has given concerts throughout the country and abroad, and continues to collaborate with her husband as well as to appear with chamber groups.

Her 2003-2004 season includes performances with the Atlanta Symphony, Florida Philharmonic, Sao Paolo Symphony, Pacific Symphony, Las Vegas Philharmonic, Charleston Symphony, New Zealand Philharmonic, a European tour with the Stuttgart Symphony Orchestra, as well as solo and chamber music recitals in Milan, New York, Chicago, Miami and San Diego.

Ms. Lisitsa has recorded seven highly acclaimed disks for the Audiofon label and has been featured in "Valentina in Miami" - an hourlong music special on PBS-TV affiliate WLRN in Miami - and in a segment of the CBS News program "Sunday Morning." Ms. Lisitsa is a "Bösendorfer" artist.

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