Cyprien Katsaris performed a recital of Chopin, Schubert and Liszt Monday night at Gusman Concert Hall

Cyprien Katsaris presented a generous program of works by Schubert, Chopin and Liszt for Friends of Chamber Music Monday night at the University of Miami’s Gusman Concert Hall.

Impressive in his recital last season, Katsaris again proved a pianist of the most refined artistry. His technique easily encompasses the most complex keyboard pyrotechnics; yet Katsaris really excels in moments of softness and repose. His limpid, pearly tone and subtly calibrated sense of line and pulse turn the nominally percussive keyboard into a poetic, singing instrument. In the manner of pianists from an earlier era, Katsaris brings a highly individual interpretive sensibility to every work he plays.

An exquisite performance of Schubert’s Allegretto, D.915 prefaced Katsaris’ fluid, volatile shaping of the Sonata in B-flat, D.960. The lyrical nobility of the opening theme presaged a performance of bold contrasts and sweeping dramatic power. For Katsaris, the pauses and silent moments are as important as Schubert’s endless font of melody. Despite sudden variations of tempo, Katsaris sustained tension, the dramatic climax strongly felt. Katsaris’ potent contrasts of light and shadow framed the movement’s arc, the return of the opening melody seemingly organic.

The pianist brought grave beauty to the Andante sostenuto, enhanced by wonderfully varied tonal coloration. An almost Mozartean lightness pervaded the Scherzo, liltingly shaped and articulated with precision. Katsaris’ vigorous traversal of the final Allegro resounded with dance-like verve and bold dramatic intensity. A lightning-paced coda climaxed an inspired performance of intelligence and passion.

Katsaris’ sense of improvisatory adventure and rhythmic urgency make him a born Chopin player. He opened the second half with an engaging Allegretto and Mazur, Chopin’s harmonization of the popular Polish tunes of his day. Katsaris assayed the Mazurka in C, Op.24, No.2 with ruminative elegance, the music’s sad undercurrent never far below the surface. Slight hesitations enhanced the beauty of Katsaris’ gleaming keyboard line.

The oft played Polonaise Miitaire in A, Op.40, No.1 was devoid of bombast, Katsaris’ flowing musicality never succumbing to the episodic nature of less idiomatically attuned performances.

A poetic and serene Nocturne in E-flat, Op.9, No.2 seemed almost improvisatory. An unusually fast version of the Valse in C-sharp minor, Op.64, No.2 also conveyed the subtext of nostalgic sadness. Wiosna (Spring), Op.74, No.2, a lovely vignette, was followed by Chant Polonais de Chopin No. 2, Liszt’s large-scale transcription of the same melodic material. Katsaris’ varied color palette and detailed shading turned this rarity into freshly minted gold.

For a thunderous finale, Katsaris offered his own transcription of Liszt’s Piano Concerto No.2. This florid showpiece proved one of the rare times a solo arrangement of a piano-orchestral work actually improves on the original. Bereft of orchestral bombast, Katsaris ornamented the instrumental ensemble passages with filigree, both elegant and flashy. A pupil of Liszt specialist Gyorgy Cziffra, Katsaris captures the larger-than-life bravura of Liszt’s keyboard gymnastics with idiomatic fluency. It was in the contrasting quiet moments when Katsaris’ performance soared into exceptional realms. He shaped Liszt’s brief lyrical strophes with unusual beauty and grace. In the finger breaking coda, Katsaris pulled out all the stops with playing of volcanic excitement.

After repeated curtain calls, Katsaris offered a unique encore — the Prelude in E minor from the first book of J.S. Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier but in an earlier version in B minor, transcribed for modern piano by Alexander Siloti. To this uniquely austere and spiritual music, Katsaris brought beauty of tone, depth of emotion and the soul of a poet.

By Lawrence Budmen, South Florida Classical Review, Tue Feb 14, 2012

These days many performers in classical music speak to audiences to share insights and stories. But it is not often that an artist disavows a performance he has just given.
This happened on Wednesday night at the International Keyboard Institute and Festival at Mannes College the New School for Music, when the noted French-Cypriot pianist Cyprien Katsaris finished a ballistic account of Chopin’s “Military” Polonaise.
The bushy-haired Mr. Katsaris, 60, warned the many aspiring pianists in the audience never to offer an “ignominious” performance like the one he had just given for an exam or a competition; otherwise “the jury will -”, he said, going silent. Then he made a gesture to slice his throat with his right hand. The audience laughed and applauded.
During this two-week festival the evening recitals mostly come in pairs. Earlier on this night, as part of the Prestige Series that presents younger artists, Gesa Luecker, a thoughtful German pianist, played works by Mozart, Liszt and Schumann.
Then, as part of the Masters Series, Mr. Katsaris, who has had a major, if somewhat unconventional, career and has not played often in America, offered lots of Liszt and Liszt transcriptions, as well as three Schubert-Liszt favorites. He also played works by Haydn, Chopin and his own finger-twisting arrangement of Gottschalk’s exuberant novelty piece, “The Banjo.”
If Mr. Katsaris’s Chopin polonaise was burly and clangorous, there was something compelling about it, if only because he had an extreme concept that he carried through, notes be damned. In a way, isn’t that the definition of a master? A master pianist may or may not be a role model. But a master has reached a point where he knows what he is about.
Mr. Katsaris gave some fascinating performances here, especially in his Liszt selections, played in honor of the 200th anniversary of that composer’s birth. In the murky, mysterious opening section of Liszt’s “Trauer-Vorspiel und Marsch”, Mr. Katsaris played with hushed dramatic intensity. The march section had the relentless force of his Chopin polonaise, but with the notes in place. The atmospheric, harmonically radical “Nuage Gris” sounded here like an anticipation of Schoenberg. In Liszt’s arrangement of the “Liebestod” from Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde”, Mr. Katsaris showed uncommon sensitivity for the orchestral textures the piano evokes.
He remains an individualistic and quirky pianist, even in his facial mannerisms (a few times he smiled at people in the audience while playing) and arm gestures (if his right hand is playing a solo melodic line, his left hand inevitably conducts it).
But in the midst of some curious performances, he showed himself capable of pianistic magic. As a break from the Romantics, he played a crisp, if somewhat too cute, account of Haydn’s Piano Sonata in C (Hob. XVI:35.) If you like Haydn crunchy, rather than smooth (to borrow terms from peanut butter), this was the performance for you.
For a long encore, he improvised, having explained to his audience that he regrets the decline of this honorable practice, at which Liszt, Beethoven and Mozart excelled. His improvisation folded familiar tunes (“The Merry Widow Waltz”, “Strangers in Paradise”, the Barcarole from “Tales of Hoffmann”) into paroxysms of piano sound that suggested updated Liszt and Scriabin.
Earlier Ms. Luecker proved a straightforward and sensitive pianist who brought lyrical grace and clarity to Mozart’s Sonata in C minor. Her artistry was at its best, rich with imagination and technical prowess, in works by Liszt, especially the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 13. In Schumann’s popular “Carnaval”, a suite of character pieces, Ms. Luecker mostly showed rhapsodic flair and lovely colors, though sometimes her breathless tempos resulted in rushed and scrambled playing.
She and Mr. Katsaris could not have been more different. This festival is covering the gamut of approaches to the piano.
The New York Times, Anthony Tommasini, 22.07.2011