concert review: Jon Nakamatsu, piano

I didn't know I was going to be reviewing this concert until just before I went. Fortuitously, we (my mother and I) had been planning to go anyway: the opportunity to hear Nakamatsu perform Schumann's Carnaval was not to be missed.

I didn't have to refresh myself on Carnaval, which I know pretty well ("Reconnaissance" is the one that is best imitated by blowing raspberries as you hum), but Chopin's Third Sonata I definitely needed to get to know better. So I listened to YouTube performances by Martha Argerich and Murray Perahia. Talk about different approaches. And Nakamatsu is different from either.

That gave me the grounding to write the review in terms of the performer's overall shaping and form, which is the aspect of performance evaluation I'm most comfortable with.

Ah, and then the encores. I recognized both as being by Chopin, but I couldn't have told you which pieces they were, except that I guessed that the first one was probably a polonaise. God bless Barlow and Morgenstern. All I had to do was glance over the print edition's pages of Chopin themes and find ones that looked like what I'd heard, and there they were.