When Olga Kern walked on stage at Bass Hall in Fort Worth, Texas in 2001, dressed in an elegant, strapless, form-fitting, brilliant, red, designer gown a collective gasp of shocked admiration ensued. Forty minutes later, after she had finished the Rachmaninoff Third Piano Concerto (which won her a Gold Medal in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition), the audience roared its approval. This writer can testify to the visceral response the pianist engendered throughout the competition. Twenty­-three years later, Olga Kern made clear in a recital on October 8^th for the Piano Master Series at the Boston Conservatory that she has lost none of her fabulous technique or very interesting musical personality.

The attractive woman with a warm and welcoming stage manner began with a captivating take on Beethoven’s Ten Variations on a Theme of Salieri, (“La Stessa, Ia stessissima” from his opera Falstaff.  Kern delivered the rarely played set deftly, revealing the score’s comic elements while elegantly shaping every variation with precision, rhythmic vitality and rich tonal color.

The highlight of the evening, Schumann’s Carnaval, followed.  Kern endowed each of its 21 sections the compelling identity Schumann demanded. Her rare marriage of technique and imagination, defied comparison. In sharp contrast to her insightful readings of Beethoven and Schumann, Kern then chose to toss off Gershwin’s Three Preludes with unprecedented speed, followed by Earl Wild’s arrangement of “Fascinatin’ Rhythm,” delivered with the easy elan we used to hear from Wild himself.

Following intermission the pianist turned to Russia. She rendered Tchaikovsky’s Meditation, Op. 72, No. 5 with an emotional intensity rarely projected from the concert stage. This piece seemed to have a special resonance for her as did the subsequent Scriabin and Rachmaninoff. Choosing pieces that included selections from Rachmaninoff’s Six moments musicaux, op. 16 and Etudes-Tableaux, op. 33, and Scriabin’s Etudes, op. 42, she easily dispatched the bravura moments present in some of these works while allowing the melodic lines to emerge clearly and convincingly with a striking singing tone.

Kern gave full rein to her tempestuous and fiery temperament in Balakirev’s Islamey, where tonal color ranged from whispering delicacy to thundering power and where she dismissed thorny technical passages as airily non-existent. The composer, himself a virtuoso pianist, said there were passages in the piece he ‘couldn’t manage’ and over the years various pianists have substituted ossias (alternatives) to replace the ‘unplayable’ mechanical difficulties. Alexander Scriabin is said to have seriously damaged his right hand while practicing Islamey.

After the Balakirev tour de force, Kern generously played four encores, ending with an effervescent rendering of Moskowski’s Etincelles, inspired, she said, by Vladimir Horowitz, whose performance of the piece she heard as a child of ten when Horowitz made his celebrated return to Russia. We should also note how Kern’s physical presence at the piano added immensely to the evening’s enjoyment. The pianist totally focused on her work, on the music under her remarkable hands, and on fully realizing the message she wanted to deliver. Never did she engage in star gazing or any other of the mannerisms so often seen today, or any affectations designed solely to call attention to self—music be damned. Truly we could take pleasure in watching as well as listening to Kern.

A consummate artist and master of her instrument, Olga Kern gave a Boston Conservatory recital to be savored and long remembered. Kudos as well to Michael Lewin, Artistic Director of the Piano Master Series at Boston Conservatory Berklee. His valuable work in organizing and presenting this series bodes well for the piano world. Play on!

Keyboard doyen Elizabeth Carr has authored “Shura Cherkassky: Piano’s Last Czar” and “Josef Hofmann: The Piano’s Forgotten Giant.”