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WILLIAMSTOWN - In 1996, Ilya Itin won the prestigious Leeds
International Piano Competition. Like previous winners such
as Murray Perahia and Radu Lupu, Itin is a player of poetic
and lyrical temperament; he has a streak of lightness and
humor in his musical personality that is all his own. He's
tall and string-bean lean, and sometimes counteracts his studied
Rachmaninoff scowl with an enchantingly goofy grin.
The pianist was born in Sverdlovsk, Russia, and trained in
Moscow and America, where he has lived since 1990. An early
study grant in this country came from Boston's Foundation
for the Chinese Performing Arts. Since winning the Leeds,
Itin has enjoyed a busy career, mostly in Europe.
For his Tuesday night recital at the International Piano
Festival at Williams College, Itin chose an all-Russian program
- Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, and Tchaikovsky. He never played
less than well, but came into his own only in the second half.
He led off with five Scriabin Preludes that displayed sensitivity
and volatility of temperament, although they seemed a little
underplayed, as if the pianist had set his middle level of
dynamics too low, forcing him into levels of quietness and
nuance he could neither quite control nor project. This also
affected Scriabin's Fifth Sonata. Beautiful as much of the
performance was, Itin seemed to be playing for himself rather
than the audience. When the music let go, Itin did not; at
the climax of the sonata, he seemed to be reading his missal
at the orgy.
He brought high seriousness to Rachmaninoff's ''Variations
on a Theme of Corelli'' and artificially prolonged the silence
at the end as if, spent, he had just finished performing Bach's
''St. Matthew Passion.'' There was much to admire in the way
he balanced the voices, kept the textures clear, and brought
individuality of character to the variations, but lightness
of being was not part of the picture.
The element of confidence and wary relaxation, missing in
the first half of the program, came to the fore after intermission
when Itin played a suite from Tchaikovsky's ballet score ''The
Sleeping Beauty,'' transcribed for piano by Mikhail Pletnev.
The piece is more effective than Pletnev's widely played ''Nutcracker''
transcription, which pales in comparison to the popular original,
whose orchestration is inimitable. ''The Sleeping Beauty''
adds another romantic masterpiece to the piano repertory -
a fact that leaves this listener with mixed feelings, because
its existence may mean that young pianists will be less eager
to rediscover neglected romantic masterpieces actually composed
for the piano, or explore wonderful music being written for
the piano today.
Itin was lustrously flexible in the great sweeping melodies
and rose handsomely to the perorations. He was even better
in the character pieces - ''Little Red Riding Hood and the
Wolf,'' ''The Canary,'' and ''The Dance of the Pages.'' These
had charm and lots of personality, and in the pas de deux
for two cats, Itin supplied claws, purrs, snarls, and flying
fur.
Three encores from the Russian repertory closed the evening.
A Tchaikovsky waltz was delicious, and in Rachmaninoff's ''Vocalise''
Itin finally achieved the full, floating tone that had eluded
him earlier in the evening. A special treat was Liadov's ''Musical
Snuff Box,'' a novelty popular among the great pianists of
generations past. Itin made it shimmer and dance in the air,
and the way he dramatized the running-down of the mechanism
at the end was so deftly delightful that it wound up the audience.
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