Sergei Babayan’s Vancouver recital last evening was a wondrous experience of beauty and rapturous emotions.
At first glance, it appeared to have been a long series of seemingly unrelated pieces. At the end of the evening, though, I felt as if I had savoured a most thoughtfully planned, imaginatively and lovingly prepared meal, with one “dish” complementing another in every way imaginable.
It is a testament of a great artist that he could capture the listener’s attention – without demanding it – with a single note, or one chord. Babayan did just that with the first of a series of Liszt transcriptions of lieder by Franz Schubert.
Right at the outset of Der Müller und der Bach, he drew the audience into the Schubertian sound world with the depth of sound and depth of feeling of his playing. In the major section that follows, he evoked an unearthly beauty from the Steinway piano. I was captivated by the richness of his playing of the piano’s lower registers in his performance of Aufenthalt. In the well-known Auf dem Wasser zu singen, he played with the kind of liquid sound, with one note melting into the next, that one so rarely hears except in the greatest artists, a true cantabile.
Babayan wisely planned the programme so that the moods of the different lieder balance one another. The frightening intensity of Die Stadt was contrasted with the eerie and obsessive evenness of the spinning wheel in Gretchen am Spinnrade. At times, it appears that there were three hands playing the different textures of the music. The sombre atmosphere of the foregoing works was again tempered by the joy of Ständchen “Horch! Horch! Here, Babayan fully exploited the sonorities of the instrument to produce an infinite palette of colours. In the most frightening and desperate Erlkönig I have ever heard, Babayan produced a sonority of a different kind, changing the timbre and colours of his playing to bring out the various characters of this brief but devastating drama. Throughout this first group of pieces, there was the artist palpable awareness of the vocal line of each lied.
The artist continued to treat us to various aspects of the Lisztian sound world, from his ardent playing of Liszt’s transcription of Schumann’s Widmung, to the delicate, even fragile beauty of the Hymne de la nuit, and to the song-like “Romance” in E minor “O pourquoi donc”.
Manuel Ponce’s Intermezzo No. 1 provided the perfect sorbet to cleanse our palate before the second group of works by Rachmaninoff. In the Ponce, Babayan highlighted the almost popular music quality of the work, by playing with much flexibility of both sound and rhythm.
It is well known that Mr. Babayan has a special affinity with the music of Sergei Rachmaninoff, and his playing of four transcriptions of and by pieces Rachmaninoff amply demonstrated that.
In Volodos’ transcriptions of Where beauty dwells and Melody, Earl Wild’s transcription of Dream, and Rachmaninoff’s transcription of Kreisler’s justly famous Libesleid, Babayan masterfully demonstrated his complete identification with and an understanding of both the Rachmaninoff idiom and sound, highlighting the transcendent beauty of the composer’s music by playing with a richness and an infinite variety of sound colours. In the Libesleid, he played the music with a fantasy-like flexibility, as well as a breathtaking lightness that was quite stunning.
The magic continued after the interval, with a range of pieces by many different composers, beginning with four Canción by Federico Mompou, playing these lovely miniatures with a beguiling simplicity and disarming directness that is both refreshing and charming.
Babayan introduced me to work unfamiliar to me - Chinar es by Armenian composer Komitas, transcribed by Villy Sargsyan. He obviously felt strongly with this music, and played it with a meditative, almost hypnotic quality that draws one right inside the music. He followed this with a beautiful performance of Sibelius’ The Spruce, reminding me what an effective composer Sibelius is for the piano.
The second half continued with Keith Jarrett’s famous transcription of Arlen’s Over the Rainbow, underscoring the beauty and inventiveness of Jarrett’s harmonic colours, without ever losing sight of the melody. This introspective work was followed by a colourful reading of Jesús Guridi’s La carrasquilla, from his Danzas viejas, and a ravishing performance of Grieg’s Ein Traum. He then gave an exciting and rhythmically impregnable performance of Albeniz’s Malagueña, followed by a return to the music of Komitas, playing his Berceuse with the utmost delicacy and sensitivity.
As if to prevent jolt us from our reverie, Babayan then played Paul Hindemith’s Einletung und Lied, highlighting the more angular and harshness of the composer’s music.
This was followed by a performance of Stephen Reynolds’ Chanson d’automne, with playing of delicacy, even fragility. Poulenc’s Hommage à Edith Piaf followed, with playing of fantastic freedom and an almost improvisatory quality. Babayan then gave us his own transcription of Fauré’s Au bord de l’eau, with again the most beautiful cantabile that successfully evoked this music of sublime drift – the nonchalant flowing of water. He returned to Poulenc, and plunged into Les chemins de l’amour, highlighting the quality of Parisian popular music by playing with charm, freedom, and freshness. Babayan remained in Paris with Alexis Weissenberg’s transcription of Charles Trenet’s En avil à Paris, bringing out all the Gallic charm of this music. The concert concluded with a delightful romp through Maurice Whitney’s transcription of Gershwin’s Oh lady, be good! Here the artist ingeniously highlighted the melodic inventiveness of Gershwin as well as the composer’s unique and unmistakable rhythmic qualities.
Throughout the evening, there was not a single moment that I doubted that we were in the presence in the greatest of artists. Babayan played this panoply of contrasting, and played every single one of them masterfully. Hearing the different works presented, I had the feeling that I was beholding different leaves of the rose window of Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral, each of the leaves with its unique beauty, making up a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Sergei Babayan is an artist whose playing transcends the instrument.
Throughout the evening, I often felt that I was not hearing notes, but colours and emotions. It was truly an evening to savour and remember for a long time to come.
