Pianopalooza II: Celebrating the piano, April Fool style

Given the gorgeous weather on Sunday, I thought nobody would want to go indoors to hear an afternoon piano recital. How wrong I was!

Corbett Auditorium was packed to the rafters with about 700 fans for the second installment of Pianopalooza, starring the entire CCM piano faculty performing well-known (and lesser-known) gems of the piano literature. There was also an April Fool spoof that took some sleuthing to figure out -- but more about that later.

Fox 19's Jack Atherton made an amiable host, who provided verbal notes on the music and the musicians.

The first half was mainly traditional piano works that were familiar to most, such as Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata, in an elegant reading by Frank Weinstock. Elizabeth Pridonoff delivered an exuberant and virtuosic reading of Chopin's Ballade No. 4 in F Minor. Other highlights of this half included a wonderfully atmospheric "Alborada del gracioso" by Ravel (James Tocco) and three Chopin Etudes (Eugene Pridonoff). It's always so evident in Eugene Pridonoff's playing that he continues the pianistic line of Rudolf Serkin and Theodor Leschetizky, with his control of weight, sonority and beauty of tone.

The second half sounded -- and looked -- quite different. Pianist Michael Chertock opened with "Dance Fury" by 37-year-old Chinese composer Gao Ping, that included Marc Wolfley on percussion. I have to admit that I wasn't expecting Ellington. But it was jazzy, virtuosic and original, with a slow section that was a samba in the best Jobim style. The duo was perfectly in synch, and the crowd ate it up.

Awadagin Pratt came next, with a tongue-in-cheek trilogy that included a handout with footnotes (don't believe them). The epitome of cool in his long orange shirt and dreds, he opened with "Fa," an obsessive little number by the strange and reclusive Charles Alkan, then drifted into an equally strange improv that merged "Dido's Lament" with "My Funny Valentine."

(About his bogus footnotes, if you read the authors' names out loud, you will get the joke!)

He ended with an audience sing-along of Christmas carols. This being Cincinnati, everybody sang!!

The Pridonoff Duo (husband and wife team Elizabeth and Eugene) then performed the Tarantelle from Rachmaninoff's Suite No. 2 for two pianos (spectacular). The program ended with a mega-performance of Khachaturian's Sabre Dance, for three pianos and one celeste, 12 hands. For an encore, it was all forces again, in the "Radetzky March," with the crowd clapping along.

So who were all of those 700 people, of all ages? I asked Dr. Myron Gerson of Montgomery why he and his wife, Joanne, came. "We just enjoy good piano music. It's not often that you get so many great pianists on one stage," he said.

Don't miss the Pridonoff Duo performing in recital on April 10 for the 25th anniversary of their tenure here.