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.

The Barber of Seville

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t “get” The Barber of Seville. Perhaps what I am about to say is sacrilege to many opera lovers.

Rossini’s opus is perhaps one of the most popular operas of all time, and yes, it is performed all over the world, to the point that the aria Largo al factotum was immortalized in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. I saw it for the third time this past Saturday, in a new production by Vancouver Opera. I have to admit that my reservations regarding the opera were not changed by the performance.

Both Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and Rossini’s The Barber of Seville were based upon plays by Pierre Beaumarchais, with pretty much the same cast of characters. But this is where the similarities end. Mozart’s Figaro is a divine comedy, with meltingly beautiful music that one never tires of hearing. Yes, The Barber of Seville has memorable music too, but the few great arias in the opera are interspersed between music that is rather bland and trite. Where Mozart’s opera is both sublimely beautiful and supremely funny, Rossini’s music is merely pretty, and its humor superficial. And whereas Mozart’s characters and drama is a commentary on humanity, Rossini’s merely serves to give us an evening of light entertainment. Yes, both operas feature the same Figaro, the same Count Almaviva, the same Rosina, and the same Doctor Bartolo and Don Basilio. But how Rossini’s portrayal of these same characters pale in comparison with Mozart! Mozart’s characters are real, with flesh and blood, whereas Rossini’s remain two-dimensional stock characters to give us a few laughs.

I find that in The Marriage of Figaro, the most humorous scenes are sometimes also the most moving. In the scene when Figaro realizes that Marcellina is actually his long lost mother, I often find myself weeping tears of joy. There is one genuinely funny scene in The Barber of Seville, at the beginning of Act II, when Count Almaviva poses as Rosina’s “substitute” singing teacher. But even this scene is no more than merely funny, and the drama never really raises above the level of Blake Edward’s Pink Panther movies.

Vancouver Opera mounted a good production of Barber of Seville, with wonderful voices singing Rossini’s demanding music. But updating the opera to a movie studio in the 1940’s did not add anything new to the drama. Yes, there are tunes in the opera that sends you out humming, but one does not leave the theatre walking on air.

Is this too much to expect from a work of art? Absolutely, I think. A great work of art should lift us above our everyday existence and elevate us into a higher sphere of well being and awareness. I’m afraid The Barber of Seville falls short of this criteria.

Of course art can be entertaining, but entertainment is not necessarily art.

The Wittgenstein's

Knowing of my fondness for Vienna and things Viennese, a friend passed on to me a book that she assured me would make interesting reading. For the next couple of days, I sat completely engrossed in The House of Wittgenstein – A Family at War, by Alexander Waugh, himself the grandson of Evelyn Waugh, famous Catholic convert and author.

I have known some dysfunctional families in my time, but the Wittgenstein’s top them all. In fact, when I think of the story of the Wittgenstein family of Vienna, I immediately think of Tolstoy’s famous opening to Anna Karenina, “All happy families are alike but an unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion.” According to an article in the New York Times Book Review, “the Wittgensteins of Vienna could give the Oedipuses a run for their money” when it comes to dysfunctional families. To varying degrees, I suppose we are all victims of our upbringing.

Waugh’s book on the Wittgenstein family offers not only fascinating insight into a famous and fabulously wealthy family, but a glimpse of the political and artistic climate of Vienna in the early part of the 20^th century. I agree with the opinion of the Literary Review that “It is hard to imagine another account showing such fluency, wit and attention to detail.”

Of the nine children of Karl Wittgenstein and Leopoldine Kalmus, two committed suicide, and one simply “went missing.” The surviving children all share a passion for art and for music, but there was no love loss between any of the siblings.

Even if you know nothing about the Wittgenstein family, you would have at least heard of two of the family members. Ludwig Wittgenstein is considered by many to be one of the 20^th century’s great philosophers. And many musicians and music lovers would have heard of Paul Wittgenstein, who was a student of the legendary Theodore Leschetizky, and a pianist of promise, but lost his right arm during World War I.

While a prisoner in the Russian war camp, Paul became determined to continue his career as a pianist. When he was later returned to his family in Vienna, he devoted himself to becoming a left-handed pianist. Family members reported him, with grim determination, practicing eight or nine hours every day. Initially, he rearranged many of the pieces from the standard repertoire, as well as the few pieces that had already been written for the left hand alone. This included an arrangement by Leopold Godowsky for left hand of Chopin’s famous Revolutionary Etude! Later on, he commissioned composers to write works for the left handed pianist.

Probably the most well-known of the left-handed piano repertoire would have to be the Concerto pour la main gauche by Maurice Ravel. This is an absolute masterpiece, much darker in colour and turbulent than the composer’s jazzy and breezy Concerto in G. Listening to the piece with one’s eyes closed, one would be hard pressed to tell that this is played by someone with only one arm. Unfortunately, relationship between pianist and composer did not remain cordial. Wittgenstein insisted that Ravel’s orchestration was too thick, and the composer accused Paul of distorting his music, and that “he was an old hand at orchestration and it does sound right.” In the end, Paul Wittgenstein capitulated, and played the concerto the way Ravel wanted it. The premiere in Paris on January 17^th, 1933, with the composer conducting, was a great success, but the incident left both soloist and composer with bad tastes in their mouths.

Other than the Ravel, there is also Sergei Prokofiev’s 4^th Piano Concerto, written in 1931 for Paul Wittgenstein but never performed by him. According to some sources, the pianist claimed that he did not understand a single note of the music. The world premiere of the concerto, incredibly enough, did not take place until September of 1956! The pianist who played the premiere, Siegfried Rapp, had lost his right arm during a battle in World War II.

Another composer Paul Wittgenstein commissioned was the then young Benjamin Britten, who wrote his Diversions for Left Hand and Orchestra. Paul Hindemith wrote Piano Music with Orchestra, and Richard Strauss Parergon zur Sinfonia Domestica, with themes from Strauss’ great symphonic work of the same name. Viennese composer Franz Schmidt wrote a set of Beethoven Variations, based on a theme from the composer’s Spring Sonata. Lesser known composers like Josef Labor (a close family friend of the Wittgenstein family), Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Sergei Bortkiewicz, all wrote numerous works for the left-handed pianist, thanks to commissions by Paul Wittgenstein. Paul continued to concertize and teach until his death on March 6^th, 1961.

Reading this book, it hit home that composers like Ravel, Britten, Prokofiev, and Strauss, names we read in music history books, were actually contemporaries of Paul Wittgenstein.

Granted that Paul Wittgenstein’s family wealth allowed him to promote his own concert career and to commission works by famous composers, one has to admire his perseverance and courage for not just continuing to play but performing, in the face of this very significant handicap.

In our own time, pianists like Gary Graffman and Leon Fleisher, who both lost the use of their right hands, benefitted from this relatively large body of piano works for the left hand alone. Posterity has Paul Wittgenstein to thank for giving the world a large body of piano literature that would otherwise not have existed.

And what a family the Wittgenstein’s was! Perhaps not people you’d like to be friends or share a meal with, but it sure was fun reading about them.

Music for Movies

Who can forget the impact of watching the first Star Wars movie in 1977?

A black screen with the words, “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” Then the now famous music of John Williams burst forth with the opening sequence, filling the audience in on the background of the story. That opening sequence, I think, is pure cinematic magic, and a stroke of genius on the part of filmmaker George Lucas. The music promises the great adventures that are to come.

Now imagine watching the same opening to the same movie, but without any music at all. Much of the impact is gone, isn’t it? To make a film without music is to take away an entire dimension of filmmaking. What I said above about Star Wars can be said about most of the movies that we have grown to love. Can we really imagine the opening of The Godfather without that famous trumpet solo? And can we see James Bond entering a scene without that taunt and suspenseful theme by John Barry?

In the wonderful Alfred Hitchcock film I Confess, a Catholic priest, played by Montgomery Clift, walks into a church into the middle of the night because he heard a noise. He is about to encounter a man who is about to confess that he had committed murder. Composer Dimitri Tiomkin, who wrote the musical score, quotes the Dies Irae (Day of Wrath), the sequence from the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass. By using this sombre 13^th century music, the composer immediately creates the tension and atmosphere that is to pervade throughout the film.

If music is such an integral part of films, why are composers who write music for film being held in such low esteem by critics and Classical music cognoscenti? Other than the fact that many people, especially critics, tend to like to label musicians into easily definable categories – he is a showman, she is a scholarly player, and so forth. Another reason may be that movies are viewed by many as entertainment and not art.

Conductor, composer and pianist André Previn, who spent his teenage and young adult years as composer and arranger for MGM Studios, had to fight against the labelling of “Hollywood composer” when he later embarked upon his career as a symphonic conductor. Early reviews for his concerts would, he said, inevitably begin with the phrase, “Last night, Hollywood’s André Previn…” He quipped that people would more likely forgive him for being a mass murderer, but not for having written music for films.

If we were to look at some of the “famous” composers who had written film music, the list is pretty impressive – Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Honegger, Richard Rodney Bennett, Aaron Copland, Phillip Glass and Sir William Walton. Hardly any of the men listed above would neatly fall under the labelling of “Hollywood composer”. Copland’s music for the movie The Red Pony is in a class of its own, and would even occasionally show up in concert programmes. The same can be said for Sir William Walton’s music for Battle of Britain. And John Williams’ moving music for Schindler’s List has entered the active repertoire for many of today’s great violinists.

There have been composers who managed to straddle the world of films and the concert hall. Miklós Rózsa’s violin concerto was written for Jascha Heifetz and his viola concerto for Pinchas Zuckerman. John Williams wrote concert music as well as his music for many memorable films. Nino Rota wrote two beautiful piano concerti. And the operas and symphonic music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold is slowly making their way back into concert halls, opera houses and recording studios. And yet, to quote Previn again, “Music critics have made it quite clear that any composer who ever contributed a four-bar jingle to a film was to be referred to as a “Hollywood composer” from then on.”

After a performance of a symphonic work by Sergei Rachmaninoff who, incidentally, never wrote a film score, a critic refers to the work as “music for Doctor Zhivago”. A few years back, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who has consistently tried to extend himself as a performer, made a recording of the film music of Ennio Morricone. The music as well as the performance is beautiful and moving. Yet I am quite certain there are those who would accuse Mr. Ma as being a sell-out, and pandering to popular taste.

When will the distinguished writers of the press stop categorizing music and musicians and judge performance and musical works purely in terms of their merit, and help rather than hinder listeners in truly enjoying music?

Arthur Rubinstein in Hamburg

I am a Youtube addict.

But when you have documentaries and legendary performances by Rubinstein, Horowitz, Richter, Gilels, Bernstein, Mehta, Ozawa, Abbado, Von Karajan, Menuhin, Stern, Ferras, du Pre and Ma at the click of the mouse, how can you resist? Recently, a kind soul posted an entry that I have enjoyed immensely. If you go into the Youtube site and type “Rubinstein in Hamburg”, you will be rewarded with a documentary, less than 30 minutes in length, about Arthur Rubinstein’s visit to the Steinway & Sons factory in Hamburg.

Because of the tragedy of the two world wars, and especially because of the atrocities committed by Germany during World War II, Arthur Rubinstein made the decision not to perform in Germany and Austria. To this end, the pianist even directed royalties from records sold in Germany towards helping victims of the holocaust. He did, however, made several trips to these two countries for personal and professional reasons. He went to Salzburg to attend a performance of Wagner’s Meistersinger, one of his favourite operas (he named one of his daughters, Eva, after the heroine in the opera), Frankfurt to promote his memoirs, and Hamburg on a couple of occasions to choose pianos.

The documentary I mentioned before is a record of one of Rubinstein’s visit to the Steinway factory, to try out one of his pianos sent there for repairs. In it, the pianist tried out the piano by playing snippets from various works in his vast repertoire, works by Chopin, Ravel and Schubert. In addition to the historical significance of the visit, the documentary once again reinforced in my mind the greatness of this particular artist, and the emotional impact of hearing Arthur Rubinstein live.

Watching Rubinstein at the piano is a lesson, not just about playing the instrument, but on an artist’s entire approach to music and to art. Moreover, viewing a Rubinstein performance gives us a revelation of healthy use of one’s body. According to Arnold Steinhardt of the Guarneri String Quartet, who frequently played and recorded with Mr. Rubinstein, music “was like food for him: he was living off the experience of making music. He wasn’t expending energy; he was getting energy.”

When Arthur Rubinstein plays the piano, he is intently listening to the music being made at the moment. When the pianist plays, he is not only playing an instrument, or even playing music, he is music. There is simplicity, as well as a complete naturalness and honesty in his playing, physically as well as musically, that I have witnessed in no other pianist. Daniel Barenboim commented that Rubinstein made it sound like someone who did no more than simply being willing to take the time.

I am grateful that such a moving documentary about Mr. Rubinstein exists and is available. In today’s musical world, where many artists are more concerned about what they wear on stage than the music they play, watching Arthur Rubinstein again reminds us of another time when music was a noble calling and not a mere “career”.

From Paris, With Love

In this age of mass-marketing of music, it is refreshing to encounter a performance that comes to the audience from the heart of the musician, and gets into the heart of the music. The latest CD release from pianist Henri-Paul Sicsic, a 2009 live recording from Paris’ famed Salle Cortot, delivers such a performance. The programme includes a generous helping of Chopin, including the Mazurka, Op. 59, No. 1, Impromptu No. 1, Op. 29, Nocturne, Op. 48, No. 1, Valse, Op. 42, and the Sonata No. 2, Op. 42, and continues with Toronto composer Alexina Louie’s I leap through the sky with stars, Maurice Ravel’s Ondine, and Évocation and Triana from Isaac Albeniz’s monumental and fiercely difficult Ibéria Suite.

While each composer challenges the performer in different ways, no composer of piano music is more difficult to play, technically as well as intellectually, than Chopin. Arthur Rubinstein confessed, “I could play a pyrotechnical Liszt sonata, requiring forty minutes for its performance, and get up from the piano without feeling tired, while even the shortest étude of Chopin compels me to an intense expenditure of effort.” The difficulty of Chopin’s music, though, lies within the inherent structure of the music. The many technical and musical challenges in Chopin’s music are never written for the sake of challenging the manual dexterity of the pianist – even though many world-famous pianists treat it as such. To be sure, it takes a virtuoso to play Chopin, but it takes so much more than a virtuoso to bring out the beauty and integrity of the music.

There is a sense of rightness in the style and flavour of Sicsic’s Chopin interpretation that is very much his own. Chopin wrote more than fifty Mazurkas, and they are the most elusive of his compositions. George Sand quipped, not without malice, that there is more music in one Chopin Mazurka than in all the operas of Meyerbeer. Perhaps more insightful is Liszt’s observation that one has to harness a major pianist to play a Mazurka of Chopin. The later Mazurkas are especially intricate to play, and calls for a balance of rhythm, timing and silence. I would agree with Liszt’s comment, and say that Henri-Paul Sicsic is a major pianist indeed. The rest of the pianist’s Chopin group is no less remarkable than the Mazurka performance. In the Impromptu, he captured the elfin lightness of the music. In the Nocturne, the other-worldly beauty of Chopin’s music is made all the more apparent. The Op. 42 Valse is probably the most difficult of the waltezs, and Sicsic once again rose to the occasion, capturing the many shifts in mood as well as the spirit of the dance.

Ever since the work was written, many pianists have attempted Chopin’s second sonata, but there is always room for another valid interpretation. Sicsic’s performance of the great Funeral March sonata is stunning. He takes the opening movement at a whirlwind tempo, which suits the impetuousness that the music calls for. The sounds he created in the shattering climaxes of the movement are overwhelming. There is relentlessness in his playing of the famous (and much maligned) Funeral March, and the lyrical middle section has never sounded more beautiful. In spite of having heard this work so often, the last movement of this work never fails to send chills up my spine. Sicsic’s playing of this movement is spooky indeed, and brings out the weirdness and the death-haunted feeling of this music.

Alexina Louie, no stranger to Canadian audiences, must be somewhat of an unknown quantity to the Parisian audience. Perhaps because of the title of the music, I have often thought of this work as having a very visual quality to it. It reminds me of the paintings of Marc Chagall, with people (and cows!) flying through the night sky. Henri-Paul Sicsic exploits, in the best sense of the word, the large palette of colours the composer put at his disposal, and paints a picture as vivid and vibrant that the music calls for.

In Ondine, the first movement of Maurice Ravel’s tone poem for piano, Gaspard de la nuit, Henri-Paul Sicsic effectively recreates the composer evocation of shimmering waters and its strange and beautiful watery spirit. There are pianists today who can play this difficult music as if it were child’s play, but not everyone can successfully capture the sonic ambience of this music. It struck me, at this point in the recital that Sicsic has, without us realizing it, taken us into a sound world that is so radically different from that of Chopin.

With the two pieces from Albeniz’s Iberia Suite, Henri-Paul Sicsic takes us into yet another realm of sound. This is not the sun-drenched Spain of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol, which is a much more descriptive piece of music, or even the Spain of Bizet’s Carmen. In Iberia, Albeniz gives us an evocation of a landscape filled with shadow and mystery. Like the Chopin Mazurkas, there is a real danger of playing this music with a “foreign accent”. This is not the case here, for Sicsic’s playing of these two masterpieces is highly idiomatic, capturing the essence of the Spanish rhythm as well as the ever changing colours, and the lightness and shadow in the music.

Sicsic rewarded this enthusiastic audience was rewarded with an encore – Chopin’s Étude in A-flat Major, the first of the Op. 25 set of Études. The pianist’s playing of this euphonious music brings out the richness and beauty of Chopin’s harmonic and melodic inventiveness.

Henri-Paul Sicsic used to be an active member of the Vancouver music scene, but now teaches at the University of Toronto. One city’s loss, as they say, is another’s gain. I look forward to this wonderful pianist’s next return home.