Pianist Parker excellent in
all-Beethoven concert

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Reviewed by Ruth O. Bingham
Special to the Star-Bulletin

Jon Kimura Parker, billed as "Hawaii's favorite pianist" and last heard here in 1999, delivered a memorable performance this past weekend in an all-Beethoven concert with the Honolulu Symphony.

Parker presented Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.4, which begins solo piano, with a quiet, fragile theme that sets the mood. Unfortunately, yesterday that theme was accompanied by a jangling telephone, whose owner deserves permanent exile to the Antarctic.

To his credit, Parker remained unfazed. He proceeded to create a finely crafted and sensitive interpretation punctuated by exciting cadenzas.

Parker was neither flashy nor powerful, but excelled in carefully tailored phrases and liquid-smooth runs. His judicious use of the sustaining pedal lent his playing a delightful transparency rarely heard on large modern grand pianos. Best of all, Parker revealed superb balance in voicing individual chords as well as whole passages.

Parker retained the all-Beethoven theme in his encore with the scherzo from Piano Sonata, Op.2, No.3.

Just as Parker chose the less-often performed Fourth Piano Concerto as the centerpiece (Nos.3 and 5 are more popular), Maestro Samuel Wong chose less-often performed works to open and close the concert.

Beethoven's Coriolan was composed as the overture to a play, now largely forgotten, by H.J. von Collin about the Roman conqueror Coriolanus. The play, no match for the music, was superfluous anyway: Coriolan summarizes the tragedy in a style reminiscent of Verdi.

Symphony No.7, undeservedly less popular than Nos. 3, 5, 6, and 9, is an exciting work replete with Beethoven's treacherous dynamics and signature fragmentation.

Once past a rough beginning, the Honolulu Symphony settled into cleaner ensemble work, although intonation in the trumpets remained unreliable.

Wong chose moderate tempos for the inner movements, favoring melancholy over a funereal tone in the second movement and a chuckle over a laugh in the scherzo (joke). These inner movements turn the orchestra on its head, giving melodies to lower instruments and accompaniments to higher instruments, forcing the conductor to sort out which of the contrapuntal lines will prevail at any given moment.

Wind soloists shone throughout the concert, but particularly in the symphony. Flutist Susan McGinn was especially prominent, with excellent solos in all four movements. Visiting principal oboist from Boston, Nancy Dimock contributed notable solos in both the symphony and the concerto. Also impressive were clarinetist James Moffitt's solo in the symphony's second movement and passages in the last two movements by French horn players Ken Friedenberg and Michiko Singh.

Wong appeared to have a strong rapport with the orchestra, generally eliciting his wide range of demands. In the concerto, he held the reins tightly, keeping the orchestra expressive but in balance with Parker; in Coriolan, he emphasized its drama, treating it as an operatic overture; and in Symphony No.7, he led them compellingly through a maze of dynamic contrasts, releasing them into a final exhilarating fortissimo.

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