It’s not hyperbole to say that Rachmaninoff is in Russian-American pianist Olga Kern‘s DNA.
“I play Rachmaninoff all my life,” said the 50-year-old Kern, who will play the composer’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra this weekend. “My great-grandmother was a mezzo-soprano, and she knew Rachmaninoff and Rachmaninoff was accompanying her in many of the concerts. She was singing Rachmaninoff songs so they were performing together. I have in my family those programs from those concerts. So it is so special that Rachmaninoff’s genius touched my family a little bit, and I feel his presence.”
Her TSO concerts on Friday, Sept. 26, and Sunday, Sept. 28, will be her first with the orchestra since she made her Tucson debut in 2003. But Kern has come back to Tucson a number of times since then, including as an artist-in-residence with the University of Arizona School of Music in January.
Tucson is “my favorite place,” Kern said during a phone call last week from home in New York. “I always go to (Saguaro National Park). I love driving there. And every time, doesn’t matter the time of the day, it’s just such a different color of the sun and the colors of the desert and the shape of cactus. It’s just unbelievable that that nature is really for me my inspiration. It’s my place where I can just be by myself, and just enjoy being there with the nature, connect with the nature.”
This will be the second time Kern will perform a Rachmaninoff piano concerto in Tucson. In spring 2007, she performed Rachmaninoff’s Second at Centennial Hall with the National Philharmonic of Russia 24 hours before the TSO, with guest pianist Fabio Bidini, performed the same work.
When we caught up with Kern, we talked about the Second Concerto and her approach to the 40-plus-minute work largely considered one of the most technically challenging in the repertoire. Here’s excerpts from that conversation.
Why does this piece resonate with you after all these years?
“It is a very special piece for any pianist, and, of course, for the piano repertoire. This is just incredible, monumental piece for me. I feel like it’s not just a piano concerto, but it’s a symphony. It’s a symphony, and it has just a lot of piano in it, you know, but the orchestra is so important there, and it’s very dramatic, very beautiful. The same time, it’s very challenging technically, and not only technically, but also emotionally. It’s just a very special piece.”
What about it makes it so special?
“Dramatically, this piece stand(s) out from all other concerti. I play all of them. I play all four, and Rhapsody On A Theme of Paganini. By the form it is very similar to his first concerto. The form is classical form, and it has a cadenza in the first movement, a gorgeous second movement and quite brilliant third. But the first concerto, it’s much shorter and it’s not that dramatically there yet, even though you can hear Rachmaninoff’s language already in the first composition. Then, of course, his Concerto No. 2 is so different from anything else because of how the form in general of the whole composition is different. There is no cadenza in it. It’s just a very specific composition with gorgeous melodies, which everyone knows. So the Third Concerto, as I said, is very similar as a form to the first, but this is the culmination of Rachmaninoff’s dramatic side of what he’s doing. It’s monumental piece, grand. It is a long concerto and it has an incredible cadenza in the first movement.”
Rachmaninoff uncharacteristically wrote two cadenzas for Piano Concerto No. 3. Which do you prefer?
“For me, personally, I like the bigger cadenza, which is much grander and it has absolute culmination for me of the dramatic point of the whole composition. It’s the solo piano cadenza in the end of the first movement. This kind of cadenza he only wrote here in this concerto. We have this incredible masterpiece and every time I play it it’s like the first and the last time I played it because I give everything to it. I give all my energy, strengths, emotion, everything. You need to have this all in this music otherwise, it’s not 100% there, you know? So, yeah, it’s ... so personal. It’s just so unique.”
You’ve played this throughout your career. How do you make it fresh every time?
“I am perfectionist, so I really love to work and discover something new, something magical. ... I play this piece for a long time, and it’s always fresh for me because I love to open the scores and work with the scores. I always say to my students — I’m teaching at Manhattan School of Music — just check the scores because when they work on the piece and they know it by heart, they don’t want to come back to the music score. But it’s very important time to time to come back to a base and check what actually composer was writing there and what he indicated. Believe it or not, every time I find something new because a piece like Rachmaninoff Third is such a masterpiece that every time there is something new, even, you know, for my muscle memory. I know it’s in me, but still, there is always something to discover and that is unique.”
Rachmaninoff seems to have a special place in your heart.
“(He) is just very special composer for me. I can’t say that I don’t like other composers I play. I love everything that I perform, but Rachmaninoff is just so special to my heart, to my soul. I feel like his music is in my blood, you know.”
Mexican composer Carlos Chávez’s “Toccata” and Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2 bookend this weekend’s season-opening “Kern Plays Rachmaninoff” concert. Performances, under the baton of TSO Music Director José Luis Gomez, are at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Sunday at Linda Ronstadt Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave. Tickets are $18-$112 through tucson symphony.org.
