Word: kogan
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...weeks after achieving a roaring success playing a Saint-Saens concerto with the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, Roy Kogan was back on the Sanders stage Saturday night. This time he played Mozart's 21st piano concerto, K. 467, a work which lacks much of the flamboyance and virtuosity of the high French romantic style, and which is therefore much more difficult to bring off convincingly. As before, Kogan generated a great deal of excitement with his fluid dexterity and remarkable technique, but he also responded well to the subtler musical challenges of Mozart. Throughout the first two movements he demonstrated...
...orchestra never imposed on Kogan's domination of the performance, but under Wilkins's meticulous direction its playing was accurately synchronized with the soloist's. During Wilkins's two-year tenure as its director, the Bach Society has played a considerable amount of Mozart, and now the experience of both conductor and musicians is bearing fruit. The strings exhibited the same cleanliness of ornamentation and sensitivity to dynamic shading as they had shown in the Purcell piece; their playing, like that of the high woodwinds and the timpani, was clean and light. The orchestra and its conductor, as well...
...Usually, rampant arpeggios and endless trills are well integrated into any piano piece and, in the case of a concerto, into the orchestral score. However, the pianist must also attempt to keep these improvisations in the context of the whole work rather than display them simply as a showpiece. Kogan succeeded in this regard Saturday in his performance of Saint-Saens's Second Piano Concerto. He handled the difficult solo parts of the work with consummate ease and sensitivity, and coordinated well with the orchestra to produce an exciting rendering of the concerto...
...ANDANTE first movement, Kogan skillfully attended to the various tempos, moods and shifts in dynamics. He was virtually always in control, whether in the delicate upper keys or in combination with the orchestra in the more powerful lower registers. He performed the second movement with piquancy and charm...
...Presto finale, Kogan again handled the improvisational parts and the entire movement easily and clearly, exciting the audience with a relentless, surging Tarantella. The orchestra, particularly in the expansive violin sections, played almost as well as Kogan. The orchestra as a whole was not quite as precise as Kogan, occasionally sounding muddled, but kept up the light and jovial pace and achieved an impressive, full sound almost throughout the piece, especially in the last movement...