Evgeny Kissin’s Uneven Piano Recital at Davies

Pianist Evgeny Kissin (photograph by Pierre Anthony, courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony)

Last night pianist Evgeny Kissin returned to Davies Symphony Hall for his latest appearance in the Great Performers Series presented by the San Francisco Symphony. His last visit took place almost exactly two years ago, on May 2, 2022. As was the case on that occasion, the experience was more than a little uneven (at least to the attentive listener).

Nevertheless, Kissin definitely deserves credit for interesting planning. The program spanned almost exactly 100 years with a chronological account of music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Frédéric Chopin, Johannes Brahms, and Sergei Prokofiev. That chronology began with the Opus 90 sonata in E minor, completed in 1814 and the last of Beethoven’s “middle” sonatas. This was followed by two relatively brief Chopin selections composed in 1841 with consecutive opus numbers, the second of the two Opus 48 nocturnes, composed in the key of F-sharp minor, and the Opus 49 fantasy in F minor. After the intermission Kissin advanced to 1854 with the Brahms Opus 10 set of four ballades. He then concluded in the early twentieth century (1912) with Prokofiev’s Opus 14, his second piano sonata in D minor.

Kissin was at his best at the very beginning and the very end. He knew just how to honor the verbose tempo descriptions for the two Beethoven movements, and he did not let the composer’s obsession with detail impinge on his own capacity for expressiveness. At the other end, he presented the Prokofiev sonata as if he were introducing on old (if somewhat rambunctious) old friend. This came from a period when the composer was not afraid of sharp edges, many of which did not go down well with his contemporary audiences. Nevertheless, it is clear that Kissin enjoy sharing that rambunctiousness with his audience; and, for me at least, this was the most satisfying portion of the evening. Sadly, it seemed as if both Chopin and Brahms were being offered more from a sense of duty than from much interest on the part of the performer.

This year Kissin limited himself to three encores. (He took four in 2022.) He began with a Chopin mazurka, whose specifics he preferred not to announce. This was followed by the piano arrangement of the march from Prokofiev’s four-act opera, his Opus 33 The Love for Three Oranges. He then signed off with the penultimate waltz in Brahms’ Opus 39 collection of sixteen (originally for four hands on one keyboard), composed in the key of A major and probably the most familiar waltz in the set. The crowd went wild (as they say) for all of the encores but seemed to accept the quietude of resignation in the final selection. Personally, I was delighted by Kissin’s ability to distill so much expressiveness into such a brief gesture and wished there had been more of that distillation in the selections enumerated in the program book.