Pianists’ Performances Reveal Technical Agility

A brief but stunning display of virtuosity kicked off the 2001 International Piano Symposium Sunday afternoon at the Colburn School of Performing Arts.

The symposium, which offers a week of master classes to piano students, was centered in 1999 at Pepperdine University in Malibu; in 2002, it will take the form of a two-week Rachmaninoff Festival Competition in Pasadena.

The opening event was a one-hour sampler by symposium faculty members Natalia Troull and Pavel Nersessian, who are scheduled to give full-scale recitals in Zipper Hall Friday and Saturday. Both pianists are on the Moscow Conservatory faculty. According to a spokesman on the Zipper stage Sunday, another member of the symposium faculty, Nikita Juzhanin, was ill and would not be performing this week.

In Mozart’s Sonata in A, K. 331, and the Harold Bauer transcription of Cesar Franck’s Prelude, Fugue and Variation for organ, Nersessian showed firm technique and musicality and a resonant, colorful tone. His performances did not reveal much individuality or temperament, however. Perhaps his recital on Saturday will do that.

Troull, an unflappable technician, as she showed in two previous visits (in 1998 and 1999), offered incandescent performances of Rachmaninoff’s Preludes in G-sharp minor, Opus 32, No. 12, and D, Opus 23, No. 4.

Then she sailed magisterially through Liszt’s daunting Spanish Rhapsody, in no moment revealing any weaknesses in her rock-solid technical arsenal.

Troull’s Friday recital will include more Rachmaninoff preludes, as well as Beethoven’s “Waldstein” Sonata and the Sonata in A minor by Nicolai Medtner.