An uplifting piano concert

MANILA, Philippines - It started as a peaceful and lovely evening with twinkling stars and moonbeams in the heavens when all of a sudden tears fell from the skies and lightning and thunder roared. The people gathered in the auditorium felt puzzled but then the storm subsided and the heavens smiled again. But as they relaxed and enjoyed their delicious meal, thunder, lightning, and raging winds joined the uncontrollable deafening rains flooding the surroundings.

Will the people survive? How can they defend themselves against this fierce tornado? But when all was peace again, we saw the victims smiling with hope and tears in their eyes telling us that the “tornado” uplifted them to look up and thank God for this “upheaval” that has cleansed their souls. Where did this happen? At the Philamlife Theater when young, healthy and robust Israeli Russian-born piano prodigy Victor Goldberg, winner of the Arianne Katez Piano Competition in Tel Aviv, the Vladimir Horowitz Competition in Kiev, Ukraine, the Pro Musicis International Award and the Artist Recognition Award at the International Keyboard Festival in New York, came from heavy schedule of concertizing all over the world to honor us also (musical inhabitants of the “Pearl of the Orient Seas) with a revealing uplifting piano concert sponsored by the ROS Music center.

When Victor performed Mozart’s Sonata in D Major, K.311, twinkling eyes and smiles filled the theater because Mozart’s heavenly melodies were so enhanced by Victor’s delicate touch and expression performed joyously flamboyant with dainty staccatos and well-delineated phrasing in agile virtuosity. So entranced were the audience that I think no one even noticed that in the first movement Mozart veered away from the strict sonata-allegro form when he did not recapitulate theme A, but only stated it toward the end of the movement. Before the frisky third movement Rondo interpreted with a lot of verve but with that heavenly touch, Victor charmed the audience with his tender rendition of the second Andante movement.

Many in the audience anticipated a Chopinesque Scriabin, for Chopin’s pianism and romantic melodies influenced Scriabin. So they waited for Victor to perform Scriabin’s Sonata No. 5 in F sharp, Op. 53 expecting to be filled with relaxing romantic feelings. But surprise! Victor performed this one movement sonata with impetuousness, startling the audience with growling passages in the low register rising to the high register, bangy chords with delicate finger passages subsiding to a soft mysterious section before going back to the loud bangy sounds with crossing hands, a constant change in mood giving it to the freedom of a fantasia with a furious ending gone wild.

His fast chordal staccatos in wild leaps, his pedaling that covered many sonorities over an extended keyboard range, his trills that gave coloristic effects, irregular rhythmic groupings performed in cantabile unbelievable dexterity left the audience breathless and speechless before they erupted in a roaring ovation!