"To Hal / With fond regards - I will have great memories of the "funniest" interview I have ever given. Love, Raymond Berney"
From the New York Times, 18 October 1981:
Reymond Berney Offers Difficult Piano Program
Though flamboyance came more easily to him than
warmth, Reymond Berney had enough of both Wednesday night to make his
New York debut at Carnegie Recital Hall an engaging one. Mr. Berney's
program of works by Marescotti, Beethoven, Falla, Schumann and Liszt was
not the sort behind which a pianist with flaws in his technique wants
to hide; fortunately, from the moment he addressed Marescotti's
''Fantasque,'' it was clear he had no need to.
A few rough edges were present in his account of the
Marescotti, but his playing exhibited remarkable control nonetheless,
along with a sure sense of pacing and tone.
Going to the opposite end of the pianistic spectrum
with his next selection, Beethoven's Sonata in A flat (Op. 26), Mr.
Berney reveled in a performance that was absorbing in its imagery and
refreshingly empty of cliches, bringing animation to the variation
movement and a fine sense of flourish to the funeral march.
Mr. Berney finished the first half of his recital
with an exciting performance of Falla's ''Fantasia Baetica,'' a work in
which effect far outstrips substance, but which nonetheless benefited
from the velocity and weight he gave its display passages. After
intermission, his account of Schumann's ''Kreisleriana'' had energy in
its faster sections but a slightly hard-edged and disorderly quality in
some of its slower ones. The recital ended with a driven performance of
Liszt's ''Mephisto'' Waltz that, though scarcely note-perfect, was taken
at tempo with no shortcuts. There were flawlessly played encores of
Chopin's Waltz in A minor (Op. 34, No. 2) and Etude in C (Op. 10, No.
1). Theodore W. Libbey Jr.
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