Review of Ivan Moravec 1997 Kansas City recital

If there's a finer Chopin player alive than Ivan Moravec, I haven't heard him or her. The Czech pianist, who's become a welcome regular on the Friends of Chamber Music series, proved his credentials yet again Saturday evening. And high-intensity applause from a near-capacity Folly Theater audience of about 1,000 proved that the music had struck home.

Chopin's F minor Ballade (No. 4, Op. 52) brought forth the most memorable music-making of the evening, a performance at once spontaneous and deeply felt. In an age when rhythm too often is equated with machined regularity, it was thrilling to hear such expressive freedom - allied to such irresistible urgency. Now lingering over a delicious change of harmony, now hesitating to give a climactic moment its space, now nudging ahead to a melodic goal, Moravec went to the music's heart and soul. The richness of color was quite to the point, too, as it was in the first set of Debussy's "Images." "Reflection in the Water" could gleam and glisten, but also glow. Beneath the surface buoyancy Moravec seemed to remind us water can swallow us, can kill. "Movement" worked itself into a powerful toccata.

The concert's Austro-German first half may have been more controversial. In music ranging from Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata and two Schubert impromptus (Nos. 2 and 3 from Op. 90) to four later pieces by Brahms, Moravec certainly took a serious approach.

Moravec's rather stern reading of Brahms' lovely A major Intermezzo (Op. 118, No. 2) didn't convince me; I hear this as a warmer-hearted, more generously expressive piece. But a certain earthiness agreed with the B minor Capriccio (Op. 76, No. 2), as did elemental power in the G minor Rhapsody (Op. 79, No. 2).

In the Schubert Moravec explored darker undercurrents beneath surface pleasantries. One felt the harmonic stresses and strains of the G flat major Impromptu; in its E flat major companion a seemingly untroubled phrase would be followed - tellingly - by something just a bit harried or disturbed.

Moravec took a daringly slow tempo in the first movement of the Beethoven, and again the effect was to lend a tragic air to what can seem mere surface pleasantry. The middle movement was mobile but earthbound - meaningfully so. In the gripping finale the slightest rhythmic delays here and there had enormous impact.