Symphonic Debut

The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra is in search of a new music director, which probably explains why we have been having more than our usual share of guest conductors. Last Saturday, conductor Alexander Shelley (son of the pianist Howard Shelley) made his debut with the orchestra. Shelley had been appointed Music Director-designate of the National Arts Centre Orchestra, succeeding Pinchas Zukerman.

The concert opened with Alexina Louie’s Infinite Sky with Birds. Ms. Louie was on hand to speak about the inspiration behind her work: “The idea of the sights of hundreds of birds taking flight and the kind of exhilaration that I feel when I see that.” I once heard it said that great music should evoke and not describe. Ms. Louie, one of Canada’s most original and innovative composers, certainly evoked the sight of birds in flight. The music is very colourful, and exploitative (in the best sense of the word) the resources of the orchestra. Shelley conducted with authority and led the musicians with clarity through the dense and complex score. Towards the end of the music, there was a moment, with rushing strings, evoking the sight of the flock of birds taking flight, which was especially memorable, and gripping. Ms. Louie’s score is one that elicits an emotional response and involvement from the audience.

It is a wonderful coincidence that both of Ravel’s piano concerti should be presented within the space of a few weeks. In this concert, Canada’s Janina Fialkowska performed the composer’s Jazz-tinged, Gershwin-influenced Piano Concerto in G Major. Whenever I hear Fialkowska, I often think of Arthur Rubinstein, her mentor. Like Rubinstein, Fialkowska plays this quintessentially French score with greater clarity than a lot of other pianists. Like Rubinstein, who also plays French music with much clarity and more “meat” than many French pianists, this makes for a very refreshing way to hear this familiar music.

The jewel in the crown is, of course, the slow movement, Adagio assai. Fialkowska played the opening of this movement, with its unusually long solo for the instrument, with great feeling. This opening gives one the feeling (as in the slow movement of Beethoven’s violin concerto) of time standing still, but Fialkowska managed to maintain the impetus of the music so that the musical line does not come to a stand still. The third movement was done with as much flair and panache that the music calls for. Shelley proved an able and sympathetic partner to Fialkowska, and the orchestra, with all the beautiful woodwind solos, sounded sensational. I could not help thinking how much Mr. Rubinstein would have enjoyed Ms. Fialkowska’s performance.

I appreciated the fact that Shelley chose a programme with a low “wow” factor for his debut. The second half of the concert consisted of Franz Schubert’s charming Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major, D. 485. Throughout the evening, but especially in this symphony, I appreciated Shelley’s sense of direction in the music, both horizontally and vertically, his sense of the musical line, and the beautiful phrasing he received from the orchestra.

Mr. Shelley is not an acrobatic conductor, but guided the musicians through the music with clear gestures, and with an invitation to listen to each other.

It was certainly a most satisfying evening, a beautiful evening of great music being played beautifully, and with joy.

Men of Faith

Two CD’s that I acquired recently featured the piano music of Bach and Liszt: A friend gave me pianist Simone Dinnerstein’s Bach album entitled Bach – A Strange Beauty. I had bought pianist Janina Fialkowska’s Liszt album after her astonishing recital in Vancouver.

The title of Simone Dinnerstein’s album came from a quote from Sir Francis Bacon, “There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.” In an interview with the pianist in the accompanying booklet (which also features artwork by the pianist father Simon Dinnerstein), she points out that Bach’s music is more than just about patterns, symmetry and logic, but that “everything about the way he writes is mysterious and unexpected. He doesn’t give you the music as you would think it should be.” Indeed, it is perhaps this beautiful strangeness in Bach’s music that we find so captivating and fascinating, even several centuries after they were written. She adds that Bach’s music is “both in motion and static, and expressive and passive.”

Simone Dinnerstein’s recording features two keyboard concerti – No. 1 in D Minor, BWV 1052 and No. 5 in F Minor, BWV 1056, the third English Suite in G Minor, BWV 808, as well as three transcriptions by three great pianists of the 20^th century. Dinnerstein gives us one of Busoni’s chorale preludes, Ich ruf zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 639, Kempff’s transcription of the opening prelude of the Cantata Ich rufe zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 639, and Dame Myra Hess’ celebrated transcription of Jesus bleibet meine Freunde, BWV 147, better known as Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring. These transcriptions represent Bach through 20^th century eyes, and call for the pianist to create a completely different sonority from Bach’s own keyboard works, the third English Suite, for instance.

I was very moved by Ms. Dinnerstein’s playing. The sound she created in the three transcriptions reminds me of the playing of Dinu Lipatti, and I can think of no greater compliment. In the keyboard concerti, there was complete accord and wonderful interplay between soloist and members of the Kammerorchester Staatskapelle Berlin, playing without a conductor. It was obvious from the performances that the musicians carefully listened to each other.

The pianist’s performance of the third English Suite was also highly convincing, from the concerto grosso-like Prélude, through all the dances, the pianist managed to bring out the character of the each movement without losing a sense of the whole suite. Perhaps her playing is not quite as rhythmically bracing as Glenn Gould, but these are certainly highly valid and beautiful performances nevertheless, certainly more arresting than, say, Angela Hewitt’s Bach playing, which I find bland and completely lacking in character.

On an equally high level is Janina Fialkowska’s Liszt album, which contains many of the pieces she played in her recent Vancouver recital – the Valse-caprice No. 6 (Soirée de Vienne, S. 427), the Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude, and the Gounod-Liszt Valse de Faust, S. 407. On top of these works, Fialkowska also gives us Liszt’s transcription of Chopin’s Six Chants polonaise, S. 480, as well as the composer’s transcription of Gretchen, the 2^nd movement of the Faust Symphony.

In the more virtuosic pieces, Fialkowska calls upon her considerable pianistic abilities and give us performances that are more than exciting, but contain an easy elegance that is found in great Liszt players like Horowitz and Cziffra.

Franz Liszt wrote many transcriptions of orchestral works, operatic arias, as well as songs by other composers. The best of these transcriptions, like the ones heard on this album, faithfully reflects the musical intention of the original composer. It is a mystery to me why pianists do not play these Chopin-Liszt songs more frequently. Not only are the original songs beautiful, but the transcriptions are masterpieces in their own right. Fialkowska captures the character of each song to the last detail.

As in her recital, the emotional core of the album is found in Liszt’s great masterpiece, the Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude from the composer’s Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses. I personally consider this one of Liszt’s greatest works for the piano, and Fialkowska’s performances of it (both in the album and at the recital) were magical.

Listening to Liszt’s Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude, as well as the music from Dinnerstein’s Bach album, I cannot help but think of how both composers’ music are imbued with their faith. For Bach, a staunch Lutheran, every act of creativity was a mean to serving God. Pianist Murray Perahia once said that although it seems like a cliché to say that Bach’s music is spiritual, he cannot really find a different way to describe it. Indeed, even in Bach’s secular music, such as the instrumental suites or concerti, there is always a sense of awe, and of the Divine.

In the case of Franz Liszt, I believe that his music is really an outlet or a reflection of his Catholic faith. Unlike Bach, who was really a church musician first and foremost, Liszt never really wrote music for ecclesiastical purpose. Yet, in many of Liszt’s works, certainly all of the Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses, and even in a work like the Sonata in B Minor, there is, like Bach, that extra spiritual dimension.

It is serendipitous that I was introduced to these two recordings in the same week, and it is fascinating to hear how these two composers’ faith became an integral part of their respective creativity.

Suffering and Beauty

We live in an age where whatever it is that we do, suffering is underrated, minimized or even trivialized. In general, we want to do away with suffering. Listening to pianist Janina Fialkowska in recital last Sunday, I am reminded how an artist must sometimes go through tremendous suffering for his or her art.

After an auspicious beginning as a concert artist, launched by no less than Arthur Rubinstein, and promoted as Rubinstein’s protégée, Fialkowska went through a period of crippling depression and anxiety, so much so that she had to stop playing and seek professional help. It was only through the help of her doctors and the encouragement of Mr. Rubinstein that she gradually resumed her concert career. In 2002, a tumour was discovered in Ms. Fialkowska’s left arm. Only after surgical removal or the tumour and muscle-transfer procedure was she able to resume playing again.

I cannot presume to know the effects these experiences must have had on Ms. Fialkowska’s spiritual and musical - I very much believe that the two are very much connected - growth, but I cannot help but guess that such challenges must have deepened her insight into her art.

Ms. Fialkowska opened her recital with Schubert’s Sonata in A Major, Op. 120, D. 664. A pensive and songful middle movement is framed by two outer movements that are gentle and joyful. The pianist made much of the expressiveness called for by the music and the beauty of sound. Many years ago, I attended Vladimir Feltsman’s much anticipated Carnegie Hall recital debut, where the pianist began his recital with the same Schubert Sonata. I must say that Ms. Fialkowska brought out the depth of the music much more than Mr. Feltsman did.

The pianist continued with three pieces by Franz Liszt, the Valse-caprice No. 6 from the Soirées de Vienne, S. 427 and the transcription of the Waltz from Gounod’s Faust, S. 407. In between these two pieces, Ms. Fialkowska played what I feel to be Liszt’s greatest piano work: the Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude, from the composer’s Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, S. 173. For the Valse-caprice and the Waltz from Faust, Ms. Fialkowska unleashed all her considerable powers as a virtuoso, bringing out all the pianistic fireworks one associates with pianists like Horowitz – her performances were on that level.

In the Bénédiction, it was more than beautiful playing that distinguishes her performance, but a lyricism and depth of feeling, as well as an absolutely magical use of the pedal that remained with me long after the concert.

The second half of the concert was devoted to the music of Chopin. Ms. Fialkowska was one of Arthur Rubinstein’s favourite students, and she must have received many valuable insights from the great pianist. But Ms. Fialkowska’s performance of Chopin was very much her own. For me, the highlight of this portion of her recital was her playing of two mazurkas, the early B-flat Major, Op. 7, No. 1 and the later C-sharp Minor, Op. 50, No. 3. From the high spirit of the early Mazurka to the piercing sadness of the C-sharp Minor, Ms. Fialkowska captured the essence and the soul of the composer in these elusive dances. We must be grateful to Ms. Fialkowska for playing the less frequently played Polonaise in E-flat Minor, Op. 26, No. 2, which is less flashy but no less great than some of the more popular Polonaises.

Vladimir Horowitz said that the Scherzo in B Minor, Op. 20, calls for the pianist to demonstrate his demonic as well as angelic sides. Ms. Fialkowska certainly brought out both aspects of this stormy work, and her playing of the middle section, when the composer quoted from the old Polish Christmas song Lulajże Jezuniu, was as beautiful as one can imagine it to be.

We are thankful that the Vancouver Chopin Society for bringing an artist as distinguished as Ms. Janina Fialkowska to share her artistry with us. Although she appears to be in the best of health, I could not help, while hearing her play, thinking of the pain artists go through for the sake of their art. It is a cruel twist of fate that an artist endowed with talent should be afflicted with ailments that would potentially cripple them. What is it about great music that draws us to continue to probe its many depths, in spite of great suffering and difficulties? The mystery in our search for beauty is that the journey may be one of many impediments. But the rewards, if not the promise, of the music, makes it a worthwhile journey.