Pianist Kasman Draws on Exuberance

Reports from the 10th Van Cliburn Competition stressed the range of talent in Fort Worth last summer. Certainly it ran at least two deep, as Yakov Kasman, the silver medalist, proved Saturday with a heroic program in the acoustically lively Recital Hall of the year-old Performing Arts Center at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut.

Indeed, the attractive 250-seat room was almost too lively for a pianist of Kasman’s energy and power. There was nothing bombastic here, but Kasman’s response to some rather extreme music was appropriately unrestrained in sound or spirit.

The 30-year-old Russian began a strenuous Rachmaninoff first half with two of the Opus 39 Etudes-Tableaux, No. 1 in C minor and No. 9 in D. He grabbed attention immediately, as anyone with the fingers for these pieces must, and sustained his hold through breathless pacing and sheer elan.

In a well-considered account of the D-minor Sonata, Kasman demonstrated the effectiveness of some original ideas about the workings of inner voices, as well as the requisite turbulence. In the slow movement--Rachmaninoff’s portrait of Faust’s Marguerite--Kasman produced a murmurous, Debussyan flow of color and point every bit as amazing as the torrents of fiercely articulated notes in the outer movements.

His approach to Haydn might not have pleased a period purist, but there was clarity and grace in his playing of the Sonata in G, Hob. XVI:40, to complement a paradoxically solemn sense of its quirkiness. In the first of several abruptly closed pieces on the second half, Kasman dashed down the ending into nothing. He may have thought it understated or he may have been trying to beat the quick applause of his clap-happy audience, but the effect seemed perfunctory.

It would have been a brave terpsichorean who attempted to dance to Brahms’ Opus 39 Waltzes, particularly as extravagantly contoured by Kasman. But what may have been problematic to the feet was pure pleasure to the ear, more languid song than lilting dance.

That was hardly true of Stravinsky’s Three Movements from “Petrushka,” all steely rhythm and kinetic energy in Kasman’s hands, with the left often overwhelming the right. His contrasts were sharp, however, and the clangor purposefully deployed.