Prokofiev Piano Concerto
"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."
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