Submitted by A New York Music Lover, Feb 27, 2007 09:11

Mr. Kirshnit, you and I must have been at different concerts on Sunday. When I listened to Garrick Ohlsson play the Op. 2, No. 3, the one you called "the best performance," what I heard were tiresome bravado, uneven tempi, and frankly, a shocking number of wrong notes probably the result of Mr. Ohlsson playing with more attitude than content. His presence at the keyboard was as if he was wrestling with Beethoven, not playing one of the youngest, most earnest of the early Sonatas. If only he had found something of Haydn or Mozart in it; instead he seems to have only found Ohlsson. I also thought, to my excellent ears, that the piano had been tuned much too brightly -- perhaps because Mr. Ohlsson seems to want to be an orchestra conductor and not a pianist -- that it had had turned into a brassy, unpleasant instrument. I can't tell if you I agree with what you've written about the second half of the program (not only a transcription of one Beethoven symphony but an encore of another? Oh my.) That's because I left at the intermission, not being able to stand listening to any more keyboard pounding. All I know is that Mr. Brendel and Mr. Pollini have nothing to worry about.

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