Kevin Kenner - Paderewski: Piano Concerto, Polish Fantasy (2011)

Ignace Paderewski was a figure who would have been well known a century ago, to Polish audiences, American ones, and quite a few in between. The great virtuoso drew huge crowds in North America as a pianist and became the first prime minister of independent modern Poland. He might or might not have played the two early works for piano and orchestra recorded on this album, but they're all but forgotten today, and they shed light on the growth of this important and interesting figure from the age of late Romantic concert life. The Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 17, was written in the 1880s, when Paderewski was a student of the Viennese pedagogue Theodor Leschetizky. The work could hardly receive a better performance than it does here from American pianist Kevin Kenner and the somewhat cumbersomely named Orchestra of the Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic in Bialystok. It's derivative of Chopin in many places and of other composers occasionally, yet it has a directness and a feel for the dramatic stroke that are distinctive. Kenner does beautifully with the nocturne-like central movement and with such moments as the appearance of a long, quasi-improvised piano solo in the first movement, announced portentously by timpani strokes about six minutes in. The Polish Fantasy in G sharp minor, Op. 19, inclines more toward Liszt than Chopin and has more of the sheer virtuosity that must have excited Paderewski's audiences later on. The Dux label's engineering is unexciting, making the performers sound cool and distant when they really aren't, and the English version of the booklet is riddled with errors. But this is a fine pick for those interested in the golden age of pianism.