South Florida Classical Review

The Miami International Piano Festival broadened its repertoire on Sunday with a two-piano extravaganza to open the season at the Aventura Art and Culture Center. Previous festival presentations have spotlighted keyboard artists in solo recitals and concerto performances with orchestra. This time three two-piano teams took the stage for a smartly programmed survey of this literature, both familiar and rarely heard.

Albert Cano Smit and Julien Libeer opened the proceedings with an transcription of Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. There is no way two players can capture the color and perfumed extravagance of Debussy’s orchestral score. Smit and Libeer  did manage to project the vignette’s languid atmospheric ethos with the lightest of touch.

Mozart’s Sonata in D Major found the pianists more in their element. They took the opening movement’s Allegro con spirito marking seriously, their rapid-fire reading lithe and replete with charm. The Andante was dispatched with aristocratic delicacy while the final Molto allegro emerged robust. Minor-key modulated episodes were given appropriate contrasting weight.

Stephen Beus and Reed Tetzloff offered three movements from Samuel Barber’s Souvenirs. Originally conceived as a ballet, the work harkens back to the early 20th century salon ballad and ballroom dance. Beus and Tetzloff brought out the nostalgia of the waltz and engendered whirlwind speed in the final gallop.

They were only just getting started. Beus and Tetzloff delivered the hit of the afternoon with Australian pianist-composer Percy Grainger’s Fantasy on Porgy and Bess. Grainger’s 20 minute adaptation of music from George Gershwin’s American operatic classic encompasses both the hit tunes as well as less familiar extracts from the opera. More than a medley, Grainger’s work is a virtuosic showpiece that challenges the technique and musicianship of the performers.

Torrents of notes open Grainger’s elaboration of the opera’s overture. “My Man’s Gone Now” gets big-boned, romantic treatment while a jazzy rhythmic pulse underpins “Summertime.” The pianists assayed “It Ain’t Necessarily So” in whirling figures while the hymn that follows the fisherman Jake’s death in the hurricane had sweeping eloquence. An up-tempo “I Got Plenty of Nothin” put an exclamation on Beus and Tetzloff’s dazzling performance. The duo seemed born to play this music, receiving a well-deserved ovation.

Festival veterans Kemal Gekic and Ilya Itin closed the concert with showpieces by Rachmaninoff and Ravel. Rachmaninoff’s early Suite No. 1 in G minor distills the composer’s signature combination of bravura and lush thematic inspiration. Gekic and Itin realized Rachmaninoff’s austere Russian version of a Barcarolles in pearly tones. The Adagio sostenuto brought a large-scale soundscape in one of Rachmaninoff’s typical  melodies. A sensitive rendition of the third movement’s depiction of flowing tears preceded the powerful tonal streams of ringing church bells in the Allegro maestoso portrait of Russian Easter.

Gekic and Itin skillfully conjured up the hazy opening of Ravel’s La Valse, the picture of a ballroom in fin de siècle Vienna as seen and heard through a gauze. As the thematic lines of a waltz began to come through, the pianists played with edgy energy and a sense of the scene becoming unhinged. Without going off the rails, the team brought out he manic darkness of the finale. Only the final chords failing to fall totally into place marred an exceptionally vivid and dynamic rendition.

The Miami International Piano Festival presents the Ferruccio Busoni 66th International Piano Competition, an all-day event November 15 at the Aventura Art and Culture Center. miamipianofest.com.

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