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Pianist Kirill Gerstein is touring the world with a trio of grizzly bears.
Make that three utterly ferocious, feral piano concertos.
The 30-year-old Russian-born virtuoso will open the Omaha Symphony’s 2009-10 season this weekend with a performance of Rachmaninoff’s dauntingly difficult Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor.
This month, he’s also performing Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor with orchestras in Europe.
How does he keep all that music — tens of thousands of notes — in his head?
“It takes a lot of practice,” Gerstein said in a recent phone interview.
The Brahms, Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky concertos are widely regarded as the three most technically challenging concertos ever written.
And the Rach Three is arguably the most grueling of the lot.
The concerto achieved pop-culture status in the 1996 movie “Shine” — the ferocity of the work supposedly caused the film’s protagonist, David Helfgott, to have a nervous breakdown.
Gerstein said the Rach Three’s reputation for difficulty is partly a stereotype due to the movie. But it’s also partly deserved.
“The most difficult thing to do on piano is to play loud and fast at the same time,” Gerstein said. “In that respect, the Rach Three is unrelenting.”
That said, Gerstein is equal to Rachmaninoff’s challenge.
A prodigious talent, he won the International Bach Competition in Poland at age 11.
He was accepted to Boston’s Berklee College of Music three years later to study jazz, becoming the youngest full-time student in the school’s history.
He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Manhattan School of Music by age 20. In 2001, he won the gold medal in Israel’s Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition.
That same year, Gerstein first played the Rach Three.
“I first played the concerto on Sept. 13, 2001, right after the World Trade Center attack,” he said. “As you can imagine, it was an extremely emotional performance.”
Contact the writer:
444-1076, john.pitcher@owh.com
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