It was a large audience that turned out Saturday evening for the Santa Cruz Symphony’s concert at Civic Center. Of special interest on this occasion was the appearance of young Santa Cruz pianist Chetan Tierra as soloist in the Prokofiev Third Piano Concerto. Tierra has shown outstanding talent from an early age, and now, as he finishes his studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music, he could be poised on the brink of establishing a successful career. Maestro John Larry Granger reminded us before the concert that Tierra had appeared several years previously with the Santa Cruz Symphony in a youth concert playing the first movement of the Grieg Concerto. He also announced that Tierra had been selected from hundreds of young pianists from all over the world to compete in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth, Texas, this coming June.
Strolling confidently to the piano, Tierra was wearing a Nehru jacket in Armani black, much the fashion among today’s young performers (along with the unshaven facial stubble some young men believe is so cool). After the brief orchestra tutti, Tierra whipped into high gear and gave us a thrilling performance of the Prokofiev Concerto. Since this is work heard more frequently on CD than in live performance, it took initially some adjustment for our ears to hear the piano part against the full orchestra — in a recording, engineers can mike the piano closer so that every detail emerges clearly, whereas in live performance of this concerto the pianist has his work cut out for him. This was mostly a problem in the outer movements with its thicker orchestral textures. At one point the percussionist on castanets was clacking away so loudly he sounded as though he was sitting in the seat next to me.
Tierra demonstrated an easy mastery of the concerto and knocked our socks off in the blazing final pages. Especially moving were some of the slower and more lyrical moments in this work where he demonstrated an impressive ability to shade and shape the musical line with a wide variety of colorful sounds. After a firestorm of applause and a standing ovation, Tierra once again showed us his remarkable tonal palette in a beautiful encore, Liszt’s transcription of Schumann’s song, Widmung. Here, Tierra wowed us with lovely shades of colorful dynamics in a range from ppp to fff as he spun pure magic.
The evening’s concert kicked off with a charming performance of José Pablo Moncayo’s Huapango, a lively fusion of Mexican folk music and symphonic style. As we heard this piece, it was possible to imagine the same work arranged for a smaller strolling mariachi band of violins and guitars. The cross rhythms were ingenious, as were the clever use of strings and wind instruments — there was something special for virtually every member of the orchestra. The piece began quietly, but eventually worked itself up into a frenzy of exciting rhythms and colors, and it was a great hit with the audience.
Because of illness in the family, I had to leave at intermission and was unable to hear the final work on the program — Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No. 2 “The Four Temperaments.” Fortunately for me and many others, this concert was being recorded and will be broadcast on KUSP 88.9 FM, Friday, April 17, at 8 pm.
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