Olga Kern

Last week, several of us from Murfreesboro drove down to Greenville to hear Olga Kern play a concert at East Carolina University.

In Chopin's Third Piano Sonata she created a beautiful calming effect as she released the intensity of the sound and tempo beginning with and moving into the second theme.

The second half of the concert included Rachmaninoff Second Sonata and Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 with a cadenza by Rachmaninoff. This got me wondering about the Liszt-Rachmaninoff connection. Rachmaninoff studied wuth Siloti, who was a Liszt student.

As I was researching that connection, I came across information regarding Rachmaninoff's burial. He was buried in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, NY where many other famous people are buried including Anne Bancroft, Tommy Dorsey, Lou Gehrig, Ruth Laredo, Robert Merrill, and Ayn Rand.

Back to Olga Kern, her encores were all Russian, and included probably one of the very best performances we are likely to hear of Rachmaninoff's C sharp minor Prelude, which we most often hear played by high school (or younger) pianists.