Olga Kern Wins Raves at Chicago's Ravinia Festival
BUENA PARK, CA (August 19, 2005) — Amid the soft, warm air of a Chicago midsummer night, music lovers were treated to a virtuoso performance by Russian-born pianist and Yamaha artist Olga Kern. According to classical music critic Wynne Delacoma, the audience of the closing evening of the Ravinia Festival on July 30 enjoyed a crowd-pleasing all-Tchaikovsky program by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. But for Delacoma, however, it was Kern – gold medal winner of the 2001 Cliburn International Piano Competition – who was “the evening’s major news.”
“There is no question that she has the flashy fingerwork component down cold,” stated Delacoma in her Chicago Sun Times review. “At various points in the familiar Piano Concerto No. 1, Kern’s piano line came hurtling out of the hard-charging orchestral texture like a screaming ballistic missile. Given the super-human tempos, it seemed impossible that her fierce torrents of crisp octaves and dense chords could withstand the strain… Surely, thundering from the top to the bottom of her mellifluous Yamaha’s keyboard at insane speeds, she would simply crash and burn. Needless to say, that never happened.”
Even more impressive was the organic flow Kern brought to the entire concerto, Delacoma noted. “Her piano line was front and center at all times, no easy feat for a young pianist with the mighty CSO as her musical partner. But she never seemed to be battling for the spotlight or preening in its glow.”
None of the brief hesitations before the first movement’s hectic little outbursts or the yearning romance in second movement’s beloved main theme seemed contrived, continued Delacoma, concluding, “This is a young woman who seems to bring serious thought to the music she plays, probing well beyond surface fireworks or easy emotional display.”
For more information, write Yamaha Corporation of America, Piano Division, P.O. Box 6600, Buena Park, CA 90622, telephone (714) 522-9011, or e-mail infostation@yamaha.com.
 Yamaha artist Olga Kern |
Even more impressive was the organic flow Kern brought to the entire concerto, Delacoma noted. “Her piano line was front and center at all times, no easy feat for a young pianist with the mighty CSO as her musical partner. But she never seemed to be battling for the spotlight or preening in its glow.”
None of the brief hesitations before the first movement’s hectic little outbursts or the yearning romance in second movement’s beloved main theme seemed contrived, continued Delacoma, concluding, “This is a young woman who seems to bring serious thought to the music she plays, probing well beyond surface fireworks or easy emotional display.”
For more information, write Yamaha Corporation of America, Piano Division, P.O. Box 6600, Buena Park, CA 90622, telephone (714) 522-9011, or e-mail infostation@yamaha.com.
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