Music & Dance Reviews : It’s Misha Dichter Time at Greek Theatre

The splendid and very serious piano recital that Misha Dichter gave, before a very small crowd, on the Miller Genuine Draft Concerts at the Greek Theatre Monday evening was probably the first such recital ever at the Vermont Avenue showplace.

In recent years, the Greek has housed mostly pop and rock attractions. But the amphitheater has a noble history of hosting major, international opera ensembles and soloists, theatrical companies and ballet troupes. Until now, however, no solo pianists.

Dichter, playing a challenging program of music by Beethoven, Brahms, Bartok and Liszt, made a strong case for classical recitals in this outdoor setting, a naturally raked hillside theater surrounded by sheltering pines.

Too bad it sounded so terrible.

That was the fault, not of the 46-year-old pianist--who, as far as we can tell, still commands a wide dynamic and emotional range, finds nuances as well as new insights in all the music he plays, and places his details carefully--but of the sound technicians broadcasting this event to the 6,125-seat amphitheater via large but apparently not sensitive equipment.

Everything, from what one guessed was a whispering soft-tone to what one knew had to be huge fortissimos, sounded in a narrow, mezzo-forte to forte range.

Furthermore, all of it tended to be raucous and ungauged. What one heard flattered neither this music nor the performer, working on what was probably, before amplification, an excellent Steinway.

The playing showed off the current estate of Dichter’s admired virtuosity and musical probity.

He began with two deeply serious works that just also happen to be highly entertaining: Beethoven’s Bagatelles, Opus 126, and Brahms’ Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel. His second half offered the 15 Hungarian Peasant Songs by Bartok and a Liszt group made up of “Funerailles,” the Second “Valse Oubliee” and the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 15.

It was an awesome demonstration of grace under pressure, longer musical lines and thoughts given full and honest expression without strain. Dichter’s tremendous authority at the keyboard is the result of a comprehensive technique combined with an astute musicality.

The high points, of course, came at the end of each half, in Brahms’ climactic fugue and in Liszt’s super-patriotic “Rakoczy” March. Even with inexcusable and utterly irritating sound distortion, they made their points.