Gustav Romero with the Honolulu Symphony.
Ready to rock
Rachmaninoff's Third
By Burl Burlingame
is the classical pianist'
greatest challenge
Star-BulletinGenerally, when people mention "Third Rock," they're talking about a television sitcom. But not pianists. No. When pianists mention "Third Rock," they aren't laughing. It's not funny. It's scary. And thrilling. They're talking about Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto, a 45-minute knucklebuster with no breathing room for the solo artist, wall-to-wall keys, white ones AND black ones. Rachmaninoff didn't miss a note. The "Third Rach" figured prominently in last year's film "Shine," the story of naturally talented pianist David Helfgott, who performed the piece in concert and then went promptly nuts.
OK, that's an over-simplification. But the piece is now known among the public as "The Theme From Shine" (as opposed the "The Theme From Shaft"), and the Honolulu Symphony is bringing pianist Gustavo Romero to town to tackle the big yazoo Sunday and Tuesday.
Any trepidations, Mr. Romero?
"Well . . ." said Romero from the family home in San Diego, "the Rachmaninoff Three is simply the most technically difficult and demanding piano concerto ever written, and requires a tremendous amount of virtuosity and stamina."
Well . . . indeed. Why play it?
"It's typical of the lyrical expressiveness that Rachmaninoff brings to all his compositions. It's sweeping and very romantic. And it's a LOT of piano playing. Very intense for 45 minutes, not enough rests.
"But OF COURSE when the symphony asked me to do it, I wanted to. That piece is the
pinnacle of piano playing, the ultimate challenge, like for runners, the Boston Marathon."
Romero went on to explain how the Third Rach becomes a kind of obsession for gifted pianists, the piece that separates the fingers from the fists, the Holy Grail of pianoforte, so to speak. After mastering it, playing to relax "can be anything! Some type of lyrical French music, for example, seems easy.
"You find out about these pieces growing up, and I knew I had to play it someday. It was inevitable. I'll never forget the first time I played the Third Rach with an orchestra. I'd already played Brahms, Tchaikovsky, the Rachmaninoff Two, and this orchestra asked me, so I said, well, I gotta tackle THIS one. I said to myself, you have to do it, start studying right now. You have no choice but to master this thing if you agree to play it."
And so he did.
Romero, whose parents were from Mexico, grew up in San Diego and discovered a piano in a neighbor's house. "I began to experiment on it, and then began to play around on the piano at school, and when the teacher commented to my parents how well I was doing with my piano playing, they were really surprised. They had no idea, and I'd had no lessons."
Once it was obvious the boy had a gift, he was taught to read music and went to Juilliard at age 14. He still makes his primary home, an apartment, in New York ("That's where it's AT!") and teaches at the University of Illinois at Urbana. His prior performing experience in Hawaii was at a recital at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, which he remembers from the audience's warm appreciation.
"Places like Hawaii -- detached from the rest of the continent -- people are very appreciative of music when it comes to them. In big towns like New York, you can hear great music every weekend, and, frankly, the audiences are a bit jaded. In Honolulu, where the classical audience is still developing, they go to concerts because they want to. They hunger for good music."
Like Rachmaninoff, the way the composer wanted it to be heard -- in the glory of live performance, not as a movie soundtrack.
Gustavo Romero and
the Honolulu SymphonyConcert times: 4 p.m. Sunday and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday.
