Kenner’s Chopin Skilled but Can Be Hollow at the Core

Kevin Kenner delivered a sometimes impressive and sometimes disengaged display of Chopin playing Wednesday night at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. His recital concluded a three-week piano festival, part of the Rosalinde Gilbert music series in Leo S. Bing Theater.

Each of the concerts was assigned to an acknowledged specialist in a particular composer. Kenner, who won the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 1990, followed players of Bach and Beethoven. Wednesday’s program touched on important peaks of Chopin’s output, though Kenner, 39, only intermittently delivered the emotional core of this familiar music. When he did, however, his success was real. And a large audience vociferously appreciated his accomplishment.

Closing the first half of the program, the breadth of feeling and aura of bravura in Chopin’s two-part Opus 22, the Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise, emerged handsomely formed, Kenner’s technical resourcefulness and dynamic variety serving the piece well.

The pianist also probed the depths of the slow movement of the B-minor Sonata with great authority. Indeed, he laid out the entire sonata stylishly and lucidly. The opening movement achieved a genuine nobility of statement.

One came away much less convinced in his shallow readings of the Barcarolle, the F-major Ballade plus an A-flat waltz and the Nocturne in D-flat. These were perfunctory, without strong characterization. Kenner has yet to find a way to make these works his own.

Kevin Kenner plays a different Chopin program March 15, 8 p.m., Marsee Auditorium, El Camino College Center for the Arts, 16007 Crenshaw Blvd., Torrance. $19-$22. (310) 329-5345.