Reviews

Pianist Sara Davis Buechner Triumphs

by Lyn Bronson, Peninsula Reviews, 11 March 2007

Maestro John Larry Granger and pianist Sara Davis Buechner

The Santa Cruz Symphony gave us a great concert last night at Civic Auditorium as pianist Sara Davis Buechner turned out to be a crowd pleaser in the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto. She also proved that she can perform a work as well known as this warhorse and still bring to it a fresh new vitality .

Not only were all the big themes magnificently projected in all their glory, but all the familiar passages were tremendously effective as Buechner navigated her way through this concerto's many difficulties with a commanding virtuosity. Along the way there were some interesting surprises. After the central climax of the first movement, the Maestoso alla Marcia, with Buechner's massive chords accompanying the full orchestra playing the first theme, the piano's next passage with the orchestra tacit is normally played softly. Buechner continued the fortissimo mood and gradually created a long diminuendo. It was a startling effect, but also a very logical and convincing one. After the great horn solo, the first movement gradually wound down to the coda, in which Buechner whipped up a storm of whirling notes and chords, which were richly textured and eminently satisfying.

The Adagio sostenuto slow movement was a gem, as the piano shared the lovely melodies with strings, clarinet and flute. The great moment in this movement was the cadenza, which most pianists can hardly wait to tear into. Buechner observed the long and grand fermata-indicated pause before beginning the cadenza quietly instead of forte, which served to draw our attention to the dramatic moment about to begin. She inserted another dramatic pause in the cadenza right after the fortissimo double note trill in the extreme treble. This pause is indicated in the orchestra, but not in the piano score. Once again Buechner made us wait before beginning the lovely series of arpeggiated chords gradually leading us to the orchestra's return with the first theme. This was truly a magical moment!

The final movement, with its great passionate melodies that are long and continuous, was a triumph from beginning to end... Buechner handled this piano like the real pro she is, and made us fall in love with this great concerto all over again.

She had one more surprise up her sleeve, for after the tumultuous applause, she played an encore for us. It was a Handel Aria arranged for solo piano by her former teacher, Polish pianist Mieczyslaw Munz. This was a quiet soulful performance that was reverent to its original source, yet also romantic and glorious sounding on the piano. This was another magic moment.

Leaving Civic Auditorium after the concert, you could hear the happy buzz from members of the audience. This is the way it should be after a concert.

Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 1 sets the stage emphatically

by Mary Kunz Goldman, Buffalo News Classical Music Critic, 16 June 2007

LEWISTON - Looking back on Sunday's Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra Beethoven program at Artpark, it was so exciting you almost can't call it a concert. It was more like a two-pronged attack, beginning with the Piano Concerto No. 1 in C and ending with the Ninth Symphony. You'd think that the Piano Concerto, an early work we don't hear that often, would have been dwarfed by the mighty Ninth. That wasn't the case. It says something for pianist Sara Buechner, not to mention the BPO and Resident Conductor Robert Franz, that the concerto turned into such a sleeper hit.

You can never tell by looking at a soloist what kind of a performance you are in for. With her skirt and pumps, Buechner looked conservative. But her playing was anything but. She played with fire and sparkle, her tone crisp and forceful. Frequently, she'd hit a note so hard that her hand would fly up from the impact. Her performance played up the excitement of this piece, which was clearly inspired by the great Mozart concertos but also foreshadowed Beethoven's own "Emperor" Concerto. Buechner churned out great measures of volume, threw herself into the rhythms and made everyone sit up and take notice. The big crowd gave her a long, heartfelt standing ovation. Not an easy act to follow.

RECORDING REVIEWS by Anthony Tommasini, 18 July 2004

Rudolf Friml: Beyond 'Indian Love Call'

WHEN a Koch Classics CD of piano works by Rudolf Friml, played by Sara Davis Buechner, turned up in my mail a while ago, I assumed it was a novelty album. Piano works by Friml? The Prague-born composer of sentimental operettas popular on Broadway in the 1910's and 20's? I kept meaning to listen, but never got around to it.

Now I have, and I can hardly stop listening. Ms. Buechner's program is a small revelation and a vindication of her devotion to Friml, a more complex figure than I had imagined.

Though songs like "Rose-Marie," "Sympathy" and "Indian Love Call" became household staples, most people today know little of Friml's musical theater works. His operettas remained crowd-pleasers on Broadway until the Great Depression, when the public lost patience with these mild-mannered confections beholden to European styles. But Friml, who died in 1972, had studied with Dvorak in Prague and was a comprehensive musician. As a pianist, he toured America with the renowned violinist Jan Kubelik. And in 1906, the year Friml settled in the United States, he performed his First Piano Concerto with Walter Damrosch and the New York Symphony Orchestra. The booklet notes for the CD include an amusing story about that performance. Friml, a gifted improviser, had left most of the solo part unwritten, including an elaborate cadenza, which he improvised differently at each performance, rattling Damrosch.

The treacly lyrics and cornball books make Friml's operettas and musicals seem sappy today. But his piano pieces, as Ms. Buechner demonstrates in elegant and nimble performances, are charming and surprisingly sophisticated. "Chanson," which Friml later recycled as a hit song, "The Donkey Serenade," is a lovely, waltzing work with a breezy melody that keeps taking unexpected turns with melting chromatic harmonies. You hear echoes of Debussy in the milky textures. Ms. Buechner plays the piece with rich tone and tasteful rubato.

There are 22 works in all. "Concert Waltz" begins with a teasing introduction, filled with double-octave outbursts and perky bouts of passagework; finally, after almost a minute, the scampering main tune begins. "Staccato Etude," with its fast-paced repeated octaves and chords, and its bumptious energy, sounds like Friml's homage to Chopin's "Butterfly" Etude. The rhapsodic "Morning Serenade" sounds like a written-out improvisation. "Egyptian Dance," which abounds in exotic modal harmonies, could be Friml's answer to "Aida," though Friml takes himself far lless seriously than Verdi did himself.

It's refreshing to hear music from the early decades of the 20th century by a composer so utterly at peace with his conservatism. There is no sense of struggle, no attempt to prove anything here. The music is what it is: something very fine. There is no struggle in Ms. Buechner's supple, articulate and nuanced performances, either, though some of these works have finger-twisting difficulties. I can't imagine this music played with more integrity and affection.

More Concert Reviews:

"Buechner has it all -- intelligence, integrity, and all-encompassing technical prowess." (Tim Page, The New York Times)

"Buechner's performance had a beauty that might have taken even Mozart's breath away." (Joseph Banno, The Washington Post)

"This performance had everything - style, technique, taste and originality...each work was carefully chosen and struck a fine balance between accessibility and sophistication...Buechner made every phrase an event, placed every voice as if setting crystal on crushed velvet, and calculated every tempo fluctuation with keen dramatic timing." (Philip Kennicott, New York Newsday)

"There was old-fashioned grandeur in Buechner's performance, a sweep that pianists like Rudolf Serkin Used to summon....extraordinary lyric playing." (Ron Emery, The Albany Times-Union)

"Buechner brought effortless technique and a lyrically fluid interpretive approach." (Alex Ross, The New York Times)

"Buechner is one of those rare ones who obviously has won her imposing list of major awards for the right reasons. She plays the piano lovingly, the tone and phrasing beguiling and grateful, the facility fluent. Her musicality was persuasive as she shaped this music of quiet but deep-thought passion with its flickering play of feelings .... A very satisfying and elevating performance." (Robert Commanday, The San Francisco Chronicle)

"Buechner's brilliant performance was a reading that Rachmaninoff himself would have relished." (The Milwaukee Journal)

On Recordings:

"What stands out is not only technique, but intelligence...When it comes to clarity, flawless tempo selection, phrasing and precise control of timbre, Buechner has no superior...No point wasting time here, this is the closest thing to a perfect disc of Mozart piano music known to me." (InTune Magazine, HT review of CD / Mozart Piano Works)

"Buechner provides an excellent introduction to Bach-Busoni, performed with unusual intelligence and grace... requisite bravura and color. This is a first-rate disk of music that deserves reviving, by a highly gifted artist." (Michael Kimmelman, The New York Times, review of CD / Bach-Busoni "Goldberg" Variations)

Recording of the Month: "I have never heard a more effective or stylish treatment of Rhapsody in Blue than this." (Igor Kipnis, Stereophile Magazine, review of CD / Gershwin Piano Music)

"It is difficult to imagine that there could ever be better recordings of these works... Buechner displays a virtuoso panache that is precisely what the music calls for." (Royal S. Brown, Fanfare Magazine, review of CD / Film Concertos of Herrmann, North and Waxman)

Other:

- Silent Film Classic Speaks Through Music - performance review at Yamaha.com