Russian Pianist Kissin Allows Pessimism to Deflate Chopin

Returning to Los Angeles after a five-year absence, Russian pianist Evgeny Kissin gave a recital in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Tuesday night. The room was full and the response ecstatic.

At 27, Kissin can already look back on a stunning career as a famous virtuoso. He was regularly hailed as a youngster; his local debut in 1991 showed an individual pianist with a striking, willful musical personality and proved memorable to many. His subsequent recordings have revealed a growing maturity.

Tuesday night, however, he seemed out of sorts, not in a sharing mood, his playing suffused with an air of pessimism, his musical approach lacking pleasure in itself. This was a Chopin program--encompassing the 24 Preludes of Opus 28, the Barcarolle and the B-flat-minor Sonata--but without the composer’s joie de vivre, his kaleidoscopic moods.

The Preludes showed the most range. Many beauties surfaced through the length of this beloved and familiar set of miniatures, and several special moments, as in the heroic solidity of the E-major piece, the feathery lightness of the C-sharp-minor, the near-narrative nuances in the F-sharp-major.

But there were also genuine disappointments: Kissin plays loud and soft, but his tone is mostly gray and monochromatic. The first Prelude, for instance, which seemed to prove that the world is flat; the “Raindrop,” which plodded along irritatingly then revealed no sunlight at the end; a loud but dispassionate run-through of the G-minor; a flippant approach to the B-flat-minor. Throughout, there was little conviction and less sound differentiation.

The Barcarolle--pretty, nicely understated--lacked clarity and specificity. Its true breadth was foreshortened. The utter calm and concentration with which Kissin imbued the Funeral March was the sonata’s high point. The final movement also proved appropriately eerie, and as soft as the composer must have dreamed. But the opening movements were merely pedestrian; the poet slumbered.

Four Chopin encores materialized in response to standing ovations, among them the Waltz in A flat, Opus 69, No. 1, the most touching playing of the evening.