Grand entrance
Horacio Gutierrez has performed only twice in Spokane. But the Cuban-born pianist’s presence can be felt at the Opera House every time the Spokane Symphony has a piano soloist.
When the orchestra bought a new piano for its 50th anniversary season in 1995, Gutierrez, a friend of former music director Fabio Mechetti, selected the 9-foot Steinway concert grand at the company’s New York factory.
On Friday, Gutierrez will return to that piano to perform Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in the symphony’s opening concert of the 2004-05 season.
The concert will mark the official Opera House debut of Mechetti’s successor, Eckart Preu.
Preu has chosen music from two Russian ballets to frame the Prokofiev concerto, Glazunov’s “The Seasons” and Stravinsky’s “Firebird.”
“Gutierrez is a pianist I have heard so many good things about, and I know he is very popular here in Spokane,” Preu said in an interview earlier this month. “But I’ve never worked with him before. I know he will be an exciting soloist to start our season.”
Gutierrez grew up in Havana, began piano lessons with his mother when he was only a toddler and studied piano there with a pupil of the Spanish composer Joaquin Nin.
“My parents were, at first, supporters of Castro’s revolution,” he said in a telephone interview. “But after two years, they saw things becoming more and more oppressive and didn’t see any hope of that situation changing for the better. So we came to the United States, first through Colombia then to Miami and finally Los Angeles.”
In Los Angeles, Gutierrrez became a student of Sergei Tarnowsky, then nearly 90, who had been Vladimir Horowitz’s teacher in Russia. According to Harold Schoenberg’s biography of Horowitz, Tarnowsky, noted as a severe judge of pianists, called Gutierrez “the most phenomenal pianist talent he had encountered since the young Horowitz.”
Gutierrez later moved to New York, where he studied at the Juilliard School with Adele Marcus and William Masselos.
“I have been very lucky to have had really fine teachers,” the pianist said. “But as Rubinstein once said, ‘The best teacher is the tape recorder.’ I think that is something every young musician needs to learn. Recording makes you listen to yourself very closely.”
Gutierrez’s studio recordings include the virtuoso concertos by Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev. But his performing activities also include a lot of chamber music with such groups as the Guarnieri and Tokyo Quartets and performances of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
And his concerts include new music by such composers such as William Schuman, Andre Previn and George Perle along with the standard repertoire.
Friday’s concert will be discussed today in the first of the symphony’s new “Classical Chats” at 12:15 p.m. in the council chambers at Spokane City Hall. The half-hour program, featuring Preu and Gutierrez in conversation with KPBX-FM music and arts director Verne Windham, will be broadcast on City Cable Channel 5.
The new series replaces the Lunch ‘n’ Learn programs presented in previous seasons at the downtown branch of the Spokane Public Library.
Preu will also discuss the music on Friday’s program as a part of the Gladys Brooks Pre-Concert Talks series in the Opera House auditorium that night at 7.
The 34-year-old Preu was selected earlier this year from a group of five finalists to succeed Mechetti as the symphony’s music director. Preu was born in Dresden, Germany, where he began his musical career as a chorister in the famous Dresden Domchor, and was educated at the University of Weimar, at the Paris Conservatory and at the Hartt School in New Haven, Conn.
He comes to Spokane from Virginia, where he was associate conductor of the Richmond Symphony.