Olga Kern plays the piano with a free spirit. She relishes music that's lyrical, drawing it in to a whisper when she feels the urge. Come time for excitement, she dives in headlong, tossing things off with pizzazz.
On her third trip to town -- soloing Friday with the Charlotte Symphony -- the young Russian let herself loose on Sergei Rachmaninoff's Concerto No. 2. She gave it the dreaminess and excitement that make Rachmaninoff's music Romantic with a capital R.
Occasionally she went a little overboard -- slowing in places where that accomplished little besides postponing the inevitable end of a phrase. Sometimes that's the price of spontaneity.
The audience, as in Kern's previous visits, responded with a lustier-than-usual standing ovation.
What thrills an audience must challenge an orchestra, though. With all Kern's slowing down and speeding up, a conductor and orchestra have to be all but clairvoyant to stick with her.
Alan Yamamoto and the Charlotte Symphony managed it more smoothly at some times than others. The speeding up worked better than the slowing down, which often involved quieting down, too. Then, the orchestra's fuzzy playing hardly registered. But when the group snapped back into action -- as in the finale's opening salvo -- it matched Kern with an impact of its own.
Earlier in the night, it also put punch in Igor Stravinsky's "Symphony in Three Movements," a piece that -- according to Stravinsky -- has the turbulence of war in the background of its driving rhythms and walloping chords. The gentler spots didn't always have the spring and precision that are basic Stravinsky ingredients. But Yamamoto and company still put over the music's vivid play of colors.
They also brought out the extremes in Jennifer Higdon's "blue cathedral," which describes Higdon's mental image of a glass church in the sky. When the orchestra murmured and glimmered, the music sailed highest. -- www.charlottesymphony.org
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