Dubravka Tomsic is what one might call a pianist’s pianist. Her first Chicago recital since her memorable Orchestra Hall debut in 1993 was a feast of elegant Mozart, commanding Brahms, exquisite Ravel and the kind of superbly finished Chopin playing not heard since the days of her great mentor, Artur Rubinstein. Every pianist in the house on Sunday afternoon would have paid a princely sum to have played half as well.
The only pity was that this final Virtuoso Piano Series concert attracted so few listeners of any sort. Sadly, the old maxim that if an artist doesn’t happen to be a household name, Chicago isn’t interested still holds true.
The Slovenia-born, Juilliard-trained pianist is all music. Because she confines her emotional expression to the keyboard, there are no mannerisms. She addresses the piano without bodily tension, and she doesn’t exert herself the way other pianists do. But, then, she doesn’t have to, because everything is there beneath her fingers, guided by a sensitive, generous musical intelligence.
Her Mozart Fantasy in D minor, K.397, had a stately, understated simplicity that proved a good foil to the two Brahms Rhapsodies, Opus 79. It’s always dangerous to attach gender designations to performances but Tomsic’s playing struck me as an ideal blend of masculine virility and feminine sensibility, with neither aspect stressed at the expense of the other.
For all that, her Ravel group, including the Toccata from “Le tombeau de Couperin,” held some of the finest piano playing Orchestra Hall has heard all season. All three selections from “Miroirs” vignettes were miracles of coloration and tonal beauty, from the delicate fluttering of “Oiseaux tristes” to the undulating seascape of “Une baroque sur l’ocean” to the subtly inflected Spanish rhythms of “Alborada del gracioso.”
Beyond their technical difficulty, the four Chopin Ballades contain a vast array of rapidly shifting emotions that few pianists can successfully encompass at one gulp. Tomsic is one of the anointed few. She conveyed a true sense of poetic narrative, often beginning softly and quietly, engaging our expectations before giving herself intensely to the music’s pent-up passions and purling lyricism. The stormy Presto con fuoco section of the F Major was amazing in its control, while Tomsic made a new piece out of the A-flat-Major war horse.
The audience demanded encores and Tomsic obliged with two–a Scarlatti sonata in G major and a Gilels specialty, the Bach-Siloti Prelude in B minor.
