Music Reviews

Sep 13, 1999 - Pianists Ping and Winn Superb in Beckman-Carr Concert

By Jack Neal

It's nice to have a concert come off as just right. It's especially nice to have a memorial concert be right in every way.

Sunday afternoon's Loretta Beckman-Carr Memorial Concert was just such an event. Mrs. Beckman-Carr, who - through her will - funded a new Steinway concert grand piano for the University of Nevada, Reno's Department of Music, had style and humane good taste. Those special talents of Mrs. Beckman-Carr's were in evidence throughout Sunday's concert in which this generous and superb gift received its debut performance.

It may seem a bit puffy to suggest that Reno is home and sometimes home to two master pianists who made this concert work and be as sumptuous a statement about music and life as pianists Gao Ping and James Winn did Sunday -barring none anywhere. But that is what I am suggesting. Certainly there are pianists elsewhere who play wonderfully, but within the confines of what each artist brings to his or her performances Gao Ping and James Winn rank with America's most distinguished interpreters of the piano repertory. With its passion for depicting a useful and gallant life in musical terms, Sunday's concert was nothing less than transporting. It was equally transporting in purist musical terms as a splendidly played event of splendidly composed music.

The Steinway was selected by James Winn, UNR faculty pianist and a steal from New York City Ballet (he was solo pianist for the company), who flew to New York to try out pianos last summer. His selection is a magnificent instrument. Gao Ping is important in the life of Mrs. Beckman-Carr and she in his, because of the encouragement, both as a friend and financially, Mrs. Beckman-Carr made in support of Mr. Ping's career. It should also be noted that Ely Haimowitz, now retired from UNR's piano faculty, was instrumental in bringing Gao Ping to America and Reno to study with him. Without Mr. Haimowitz there undoubtedly would be no Gao Ping Reno connection.

Whatever confidences have been placed in Gao Ping as a pianist of great promise were fully confirmed at Sunday's duo piano recital. Mr. Ping plays with delicacy, but it's a delicacy infused with a well-adjusted sense of masculinity. His is a forthright pianism, bold, dramatic and revelatory, without any of the overly bombastic fireworks less subtle pianists use as a cover for not having much to say. His Bach (J.S.) Prelude and Fugue in B Minor was ethereal, introspective and lovingly played. His Chopin Ballade in F Minor, Op. 52, was at first rapturous, then powerful, and always in all ways elegantly played. Mr. Ping's "Distant Voices," a suite of three Chinese folksongs redesigned by the pianist for piano performance, are as evocative of Chinese culture as they are adroitly pianistic. His use of angular, "fibrous" dissonance in "Nostalgia," the first of suite's three folksongs, brings the lace-like look of Chinese sketches to the ear with poignancy. While "Blue Flower," the last of the suite's three pieces, is Gershwinesque in its rhythmic sassiness. The pianist composed "Departure" especially for this program as a muted musical benediction for Mrs. Beckmann Carr. It was eloquently played.

James Winn's contributions were no less moving. Franck's monumental Prelude, Chorale and Fugue was lyrically romantic in Winn's, and Franck's, impeccably French romantic way. Franck's music has a serenity of spirit, an idealism and a mysticism that made it as entirely correct for Sunday's program as it was entirely perfect in performance by Mr. Winn. Mr. Winn's playing is athletic - dazzling virtuoso work - without ever becoming an athletic event. He is an exciting and very musical pianist. The joining together of the Winn-Ping temperaments for Saint-Saen's elegant and dashing Variations on a Theme by Beethoven, Op. 35, was not just a performance, it was an event; translucent, rambunctious (lots of verve) and gorgeous, the Saint-Saen's was a tour de force.

Dame Myra Hess's transcription for two pianos of Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" was the concert's affecting encore, which - in context with the program's inspired performances - added a touch of wistful humor to the beautifully presented opening comments of Mrs. Beckman-Carr's friend, Ursula Tracy. "She had charm, wit, passion and generosity," Mrs. Tracy said of her friend. "She sat on many boards and sometimes had her way and sometimes not." Sunday's extraordinary concert was one of the times, when Mrs. Beckman-Carr had her way.

Proceeds from Sunday's concert will be used to establish a Loretta Beckman-Carr music scholarship. For information about the scholarship and other University of Nevada, Reno, Department of Music concerts and events, call 775-784-6145.