Return of an Old Friend

Pianist Leif Ove Andsnes is no stranger to Vancouver audiences, and so it was with pleasure to welcome him back to the stage of the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts yesterday afternoon for a thoughtfully put together recital programme.

Andsnes began his recital with a series of short character pieces by Jean Sibelius. The artist commenced his performance with the Kyllikki, Op. 41, a set of three “lyrical scenes”, followed by The Birch and The Spruce, from the Op. 75 “tree” pieces, and three pieces (The Forest Lake, Song in the Forest, and Spring Vision) from the Five Esquisses, Op. 114. These are lovely little vignettes for the piano, quite reminiscent of the Lyric Pieces of Grieg. For a composer not known for his piano works, I was struck by how pianistic these pieces are. Judging from Andsnes’ idiomatic performance yesterday, it appears that these are pieces that pianists would do well to explore. Perhaps the pianist can give us the more characteristically Nordic Sonatine, Op. 67 on his next visit?

In the last few years, Leif Ove Andsnes has been devoting much time and effort towards the music of Beethoven, having performed and recorded all the piano concerti with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. The artist’s affinity for the works of Beethoven was evident in his completely satisfactory performance of the Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 31, No. 3. In the opening Allegro, Andsnes achieved a wonderful sense of motion and direction, and brought out all the rough and tumble sense of humour so characteristic of the composer. This was especially noticeable in the development section of the movement, with the opening theme being played by the left hand (mm. 109 to 113, and mm. 117 to 122). As well, the two pianissimo chords that ended the movement were timed to perfection.

In the scherzo, Andsnes conjured up a real sense of perpetual motion in the music. The opening right hand chords had a real sense of vertical direction, and never felt ponderous. In the devastatingly funny ending of the movement, with unison passagework followed by pianissimo octaves, the pianist’s sense of comic timing was impeccable.

Andsnes played the Menuetto (Moderato e grazioso) and Trio simply but beautifully. I was thankful that he did not monumentalize the music, but highlighted its almost childlike beauty. In the return of the Menuetto, I did notice even greater warmth in the playing. The breathless Presto con fuoco, a deliberate tempest in a teacup, the pianist was in complete pianistic control, which gave the music even more of a breathless quality. The three triumphant final cadences ended the first half of the concert in high spirits.

Throughout the performance of the Beethoven, there was a sense of unity, that the four movements are part of a greater whole. There was also a sense of, for lack of a better word, “rightness” in his chosen tempi for the movements, as well as in the tempo relationship between movements.

The pianist opened his programme after the interval with Claude Debussy’s La Soirée dans Grenade, from Estampes. It was playing of great clarity, without the great splashes of sonorities that many pianists infused this music with. Andsnes’ interpretation is certainly a valid one, reminding me of Pierre Boulez’s statement that he tried to take away the fog and smoke from the music of Debussy. The pianist allowed himself very little leeway in terms of rhythm, which gave this music even more of a relentless quality.

There was some truly stunning piano playing in three Debussy Études that followed. In Pour les degrés chromatiques, the evenness of the pianist’s articulation was eerie. In Pour les arpèges composés, Andsnes’s beautiful sound really highlighted the resonances of the music. In Pour les octaves, there was an impeccable sense of timing in the many shifts of tempo and moods.

Andsnes seemed to have conceived his final group of Chopin works – four seemingly unrelated works - as an integrated set. One can see this by looking at the character of each “movement” of the set, as well as in the key relationship between the pieces. He began his Chopin set with the popular Impromptu in A-flat Major, Op. 29, and played it with a lightness and sense of motion that worked perfectly for this music. The artist did not try to “squeeze” every ounce of emotion out of the middle F Minor section, but it was clearly playing that was deeply felt. In the Étude in A-flat Major, from the Trios Nouvelles Etudes, he evoked a sound of great beauty, and he made the right hand chords truly float, highlighting the beautiful harmonies and subtle harmonic changes in the music. In the Nocturne in F Major, Op. 15, No. 1, the shifts between the calm opening and closing and the stormy middle section was very effective. In the Ballade in F Minor, Op. 52, Andsnes played like a guide that was leading us through this incredible musical journey, himself always clearly seeing the way before him. What is more, there was a real sense of organic unity in the massive work, not easily achievable and not often achieved.

After a well-deserved ovation, Andsnes graced us with a stunning and breathtaking performance of yet another Chopin work, the Etude in F Minor, Op. 25, No. 2, playing it at a tempo very close to that indicated by the composer, yet without sacrificing any of the clarity in the right hand triplets.

On the whole, the recital was truly a model of piano playing and music making. Andsnes is playing this particular programme throughout this concert season, and it showed. He had obviously thought about and lived with this music for a long time, and the confidence and maturity he brought to every note yesterday afternoon was truly a gift to Vancouver audiences.

Patrick May

Revisiting Schnabel's Beethoven

I finished listening to Artur Schnabel’s recording of Beethoven’s thirty two piano sonatas. No, it was not some macho thing where I did it in one sitting. Over the last few weeks, I have been listening to one or two sonatas a day, and the experience has a revelation.

Today, when there are dozens of complete recordings of these iconic works and with pianists rushing to recording them once they reached their 18^th birthday, it is difficult to imagine the significance and impact those first recordings had.

In Harold Schonberg’s entertaining (but not always accurate) book, The Great Pianists, the writer devoted an entire chapter to Artur Schnabel (even Arthur Rubinstein had to share a chapter with his archrival and sometime friend Vladimir Horowitz), and entitled it “The Man Who Invented Beethoven.”

It took Schnabel several years, from 1931 to 1935, to record all the sonatas.  Listening to them again today, the performances are, to me, just as valid, moving and, for lack of a better word, right. I once heard the comment that piano playing today has become either anonymous or idiosyncratic. Schnabel’s playing is neither. And hearing these recordings remind me how standardized, even generic, music making has become today.

Unlike other Beethoven “specialists” of his time, pianists like Wilhelm Backhaus, Rudolf Serkin, and Wilhelm Kempff, to name just a few, pianists who carry the torch of the Germanic tradition of piano playing, Schnabel never hesitated to take chances in his playing. In many of the faster movements, Schnabel played with an absolute feeling of reckless abandon, making the performance extremely thrilling. Don’t get me wrong, Schnabel was very much interested in the details, as well as the structural integrity of the music, but he was not an artist who saw only the trees and not the forest. It is music-making that was, and is, spontaneous and very much alive. Hearing these performances, I couldn’t help but feel that Beethoven himself must have played in a similar way.

Schnabel’s Beethoven recordings were made in the days when editing was not possible, and much has been made of Schnabel’s many wrong notes in his recordings (and in his live performances as well). Schnabel had as remarkable a technique as any of his colleagues, then and now, but he was simply not interested in merely playing all the correct notes.

Note-perfect performances, a norm in our times, can be detrimental to the recreation of great music. Pianist Murray Perahia reminds us that perfection is not only an impossible but dangerous pursuit.

In Arthur Rubinstein’s memoirs, My Many Years, the pianist was quite dismissive of Schnabel’s playing. This is unfortunate, because there are remarkable similarities between the playing of these two great artists – the same generous, unforced tone at the piano, and a remarkably similar approach to the score. It is interesting to note that the recordings of Rubinstein, the Romantic pianist par-excellence, sounds more restrained, even careful, and more “Classical”, in his Beethoven recordings than Schnabel, who is remembered as a great classicist. It reminds us once again that great artists can and should never be categorized. As much as Schnabel was a thinking pianist, he was after all a product of the 19^th century. In his playing, he was not a rigid tempo player. He was never hesitant to give the music breathing space, or shifting the tempo within a movement. For me, Schnabel’s music-making is closer to that of a Fürtwangler than a Toscinini.

Today’s musicians – not just pianists - can do worse than to consult and enjoy Schnabel’s Beethoven recordings. It is not so much a matter of imitating the way he played, but it is a glimpse, a looking back, into a different approach to art, and to music.

More than just a historical document, Schnabel’s recording of the Beethoven sonatas – from the opening upward “rocket” motive in the F Minor sonata to the ethereal final pages of the C Minor, Op. 111 - is part of our heritage as musicians, not to mention some of the most exalted and inspired music-making ever put on vinyl.