If you are a fan of Chopin’s piano music, this happens to be a good year for you: 2010 is the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth, and there are plenty of all-Chopin recitals in San Diego. Smack dab in the middle of the year is a 4-concert series by Gustavo Romero for the Athenaeum. Sunday afternoon Romero kicked off the series by performing all of Chopin’s ballades, the Barcarolle, the Polonaise in F-sharp minor, and the 3 Nocturnes, op. 9 before a near capacity crowd at the Neurosciences Institute.

In 1999, Romero performed a series of concerts for the Athenaeum devoted exclusively to Chopin, and practically every year since, he has returned to showcase a single composer—Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms—for consecutive weekend performances in the summer. This year Romero has chosen to return to Chopin.

Pianist Gustavo Romero.

^{Courtesy Photo}

With such a wealth of music to choose from, it would be impossible to please every Chopin fan. (Only 3 mazurkas on the whole series? No etudes, waltzes, or impromptus?) Furthermore, his concentrating one genre on some of the programs can be a little challenging for listeners: all of the ballades back to back, as heard on Sunday, or all the scherzos next Sunday. What one gains in appreciation of the varied possibilities within each type of music can be offset by a certain unavoidable sameness of mood within that genre.

Sunday’s program revealed Romero’s strengths—a beautiful cantabile tone in the right hand admirably suited to Chopin’s long operatic melodies; a striking physical presence on stage to accompany the theatrical pauses, the fiery passagework, and the quiescent tranquility in the music; a delicate, legato left hand which creates a soft harmonic carpet over which the right hand can sing out a melody. It also showed up his weaknesses—a sloppiness most apparent in fast grace note passages in which articulations are lost in a haze or pianissimo; an interpretive impetuosity which at times threatened to derail the overall forms or momentum of a work; and a casual regard for the composer’s intentions revealed in the piano scores.

What exactly constitutes the urtext in a Chopin piano work is a matter of considerable debate among scholars, as Chopin made many revisions, both in later editions sent to publishers, and on the fly in his students’ copies of his scores during their piano lessons with him. This is usually an issue in Romero’s piano work, regardless of who he’s playing; however, Chopin stands up to more interpretive extremes than other composers, such as Beethoven or Mozart.

High points of Romero’s recital on Sunday included a carefully played Barcarolle which never lost its rocking momentum; the sympathetic drama imbued to the 4th and 1st Ballades; and his wonderful right hand melodies in the Nocturnes. However, grace note runs in the same Nocturnes were sometimes indistinct; the left-hand histrionics in the Polonaise at times obscured the main line; and sections of the 3rd Ballade in A-flat were sloppy.

The audience at the Neurosciences Institute, however, was very forgiving to any of these faults, and demonstrated their enthusiasm with vigorous applause and calls.

When it was encore time, Romero announced that he would play Spanish music in honor of Spain’s weekend victory in the World Cup. He chose Isaac Albeniz’s Tango from Espana, Mompou’s Secreto from his early collection of Impresiones Intimas; and the Sonata in D major by Matteo Albeniz (no relation to Isaac), a vibrant Rococo work with a good deal of similarity to Domenico Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas. The encores were all played with a perfect combination of technique, passion, and insight.

For a copy of the program, click here.