Actually, the museum has been running this concert series successfully for a long time now - well over a year. I'm genuinely surprised to read such a poor review (I missed this month) and would suggest to give it another go. For a free series it is really quite superb.

Oh, give the museum a break! Staff members cannot predict a performer's quirks, nor can a federally-funded museum afford to pay a piano tuner to be on hand throughout an entire concert of keyboard-abusing Rachmaninoff. If you want a pristine performance that is attended to by a staff devoted entirely to musical performance, pay some money and go to the Kennedy Center. I think the Steinway Series is fab! Keep up the great work, SAAM staff!

The Steinway Series generally is quite good and it may indeed be a bit much to expect SAAM to keep a piano tuner on hand throughout a concert, but your comments about Ms. Ulyanova's interpretations are generally on the mark, especially the final sentence. The concert was perhaps the weirdest one I've ever been to. One sensed a certain intensity in Ms. Ulyanova's approach from the beginning, but it manifested itself in a tendency to play everything quickly, perhaps because she didn't know how else to express that intensity. The first half, with Soler, Beethoven's Appassionata, and Chopin was over in 35 minutes, with Ms. Ulyanova acknowledging the audience's applause and bowing between the pieces. But in the second half (two Debussy pieces, a Rachmaninoff prelude, and Rachmaninoff's Sonata No. 2), she seemed focused on barreling through the music as quickly as she could, not even taking note of the light applause after the Debussy. Not knowing the two Rachmaninoff pieces well, I was not able to tell where the prelude left off and the sonata began. Many in the audience also had the same difficulty hearing the separation between the Debussy and Rachmaninoff pieces. The end result was that 99% of us became confused about what music was being played when and whether the concert was really over when it ended. This was not helped by the fact that Ms. Ulyanova acknowledged the audience's applause briefly when she was finished but then left the stage quickly and did not return. The entire second half of the concert lasted 22 minutes and the concert was over at 4:10 after having started at 3, surely some kind of speed record! I think the reason that the staff was slow to turn up the lights is that they shared the same confusion about whether the concert was really over or not. To sum up, I will give the Steinway Series another chance as I have enjoyed many good concerts it has presented before, but I would venture to say that Ms. Ulyanova needs to establish a more respectful connection with her audience and to learn (as is true of so many young musicians) not to confuse artistic expression with technical brilliance.