A Debut with Bach and Beethoven

One of the hallmarks of a successful musical performance is when, on top of the visceral excitement the music generates, an artist draws the audience into the emotional and spiritual world of the composers. Andras Schiff did this masterfully in his recent recital here, and I knew that Nelson Goerner, making his Vancouver debut last night, would have a, shall we say, a tough act to follow.

J. S. Bach’s Partita No. 6 in E Minor, BWV 830, has the largest canvas of the six, large in scope as well as in emotional range, and the most technically difficult. Goerner’s performance of this great work was certainly a pianistic tour de force, but unfortunately not more than that. In the opening Toccata, the pianist failed, to my ears, to fathom the profundity and the gravity of the music. It also lacked a certain feeling of spaciousness, and of musical tension. I believe that the artist could have made greater use of the brief moments of silence in between musical ideas, especially right before the arrival of the fugue (m. 26). In the great fugue, I do commend Goerner in the clarity of the voices and textures, but again, it was not a spiritual journey, such that with the return of the opening musical idea (m. 89), it did not evoke a sense of great emotional release.

I do not believe that the repeats in the dances should be observed just for the sake of observing them. Goerner observed every repeat in the dances, but played them exactly the same way as he did the first time.  I feel that repeats should be played only if the artist has something different to say about the music.

Goerner displayed an incredible deftness and lightness of touch in the Corrente as well as the rhythmically tricky Tempo de Gavotta, but it sounded more like, forgive me, Scarlatti rather than Bach. Even in the great Sarabande, it became like a series of beautiful notes, rather than a sense of time standing still. The artist very successfully navigated the incredible complexities of the fugue-like Gigue, and it was truly stunning piano playing. Mr. Goerner is a young man; he has all the time in the world to plunge the depths of Bach. To me, he is at the beginning of this incredible journey.

Of all the “great” composers, Felix Mendelssohn is a figure that sometimes puzzles me. The composer of the great Violin Concerto in E Minor, the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Piano Trio in D Minor, and the joyous Octet in E-flat Major, music that are, to me, divinely inspired, also wrote a lot of music that are merely effective. The Fantasy in F-sharp Minor, Op. 28, the so-called Scottish Sonata, is one such piece. To my ears, it is a piece, written by a great pianist, reveling in the act (and joy) of playing the piano. To that end, Goerner succeeded admirably, and the playing was one of great sweep and panache. Musically and pianistically, it was a more successful performance than one given by Murray Perahia years ago.

It is difficult to believe that we would be hearing Beethoven Hammerklavier twice in one season (Steven Osborne gave a wonderful performance of this work a few weeks ago). Goerner was a different pianist in the Beethoven, and it was a performance of total commitment, and of great beauty and depth. He understood and realized the construction and architecture of the 1^st movement, resulting in a performance of grandeur and excitement.

In the Scherzo, the pianist understood the unique humour in late Beethoven, the pregnant pauses, the Prestissimo scale-run at m. 112 and brief tremolo that follows (m. 113-114) were particularly effective as well as truly humourous. I was particularly moved by Goerner’s playing of the tremendous Adagio sostenuto, which was certain, as Beethoven instructed, Appassionato e con molto sentimento. Here, the artist succeeded in drawing us into the emotional core of the music. The final three-voice fugue was played with absolute confidence and conviction, and stunning trills! To me, the performance of this great work was masterful, and completely satisfactory.

After a well-deserved ovation, the Goerner gave us two items for “dessert”, a Ignacy Jan Paderewski’s rhythmically intriguing Nocturne, and Felix Blumenfeld’s (Vladimir Horowitz’s teacher) Etude for the Left Hand. The performance of the Blumenfeld was truly breathtaking. One would almost be tempted to say that Mr. Goerner has the greatest left-hand in the music world. It was an incredible feat of pianism.

We are truly fortunate to have the Vancouver Chopin Society as well as the Vancouver Recital Society to keep the solo recital alive in our community. We await the joys of further musical discoveries in the next few months and coming concert seasons.

Making Magic

Yesterday afternoon, the air within the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts in Vancouver seemed more rarefied during Andras Schiff’s magnificent recital.

There are for me, two kinds of musician, ones that draw our attention to his or her incredible physical ability at the instrument, and a small and select group, to which Sir Andras Schiff belongs, that transcends his or her instrument, so that the audience is aware of only the beauty of the message, and not the medium. The former group of artists gives us excitement, but the latter brings us into communion with the inner, spiritual realm of the music.

Schiff began his programme with the three principal notes of the C Major chord, in Haydn’s Sonata in C Major, Hob XVI:50. Alfred Brendal once said that during a performance, an artist should lose and find oneself at the same time. Schiff was completely absorbed into Haydn’s sound world; yet the performance was one of wholeness, where the first notes led inevitability to the last chord. Every note was like a pearl within a perfect necklace. Every pause and fermata, even the brief time in between movements, held us in breathless suspense until we hear the next sound. In Alfred Brendel’s lecture on humour in music of the Classical period a few years back, the pianist discussed the third movement of this work at length, highlighting the rambunctiousness of the music. Schiff’s playing of the movement did indeed bring out the humour, but in a way that inspires not a belly laugh, but a gentle chuckle.

I had heard the pianist play Beethoven’s Sonata in E Major, Op. 109, before, in Seattle, where he generously gave us the entire sonata as an encore to his performance of the Goldberg Variations! (This brings to mind the story of Rudolf Serkin playing the entire Goldberg Variations as an encore, at the end of which about four people remained in the audience.) For me, yesterday’s performance towered even over that Seattle performance. In the third movement, one rarely hears one variation leads so seamlessly and logically into the next. In the theme and variations, Schiff, I feel, came as close to Beethoven’s markings – Gesangvoll, mit innigster Empfindung – as I have heard. There were a few particularly magical moments in the performance (which is saying a lot) - the final diminuendo at the end of the first movement, the beginning of the B section in the final movement’s fourth variation (m. 106), and the almost unbearably beautiful refrain of the theme at the end, which gave me the feeling of returning from a long and incredible journey. At the end of the sonata, the audience appeared to have been in a trance, not daring to break the magic of the moment by applauding.

Mozart’s Sonata in C Major, K. 545, has been slaughtered by so many piano students, that it really takes a truly great performer to remind us of what a jewel this deceptively simple piece really is. Years ago, I heard a magnificent performance of this sonata by Radu Lupu. Schiff’s performance yesterday was equally beautiful. Schiff observed all the repeats in the sonata, but interjected many tasteful and deliciously beautiful ornaments in the repeats, including a little cadenza at the fermata (m. 52) of the third movement. Schiff really highlighted the beauty of the second movement, and reminding us of its harmonic adventurousness.

In a masterclass, when Murray Perahia was working with a student on the first movement of Schubert’s Sonata in C Minor, D. 958, the pianist commented that this work really belongs to the emotional and sound world of Winterreise. Schiff’s performance of this sonata reminded me of Perahia’s comment. Of all of Schubert’s late sonatas, this work is surely the darkest, angriest, and most demonic. Schiff’s playing of the first movement really highlighted the contrast and constant shifting between the highly dramatic and the extreme lyricism. His voicing of the chords, particularly in the first two movements, was particularly beautiful. In the extended fourth movement, from its gently rollicking opening theme to the determined C Minor perfect cadence that ended the work, Schiff held our attention throughout and made us forget the “heavenly length” of the movement, and the work.

Other than the incredible pianism, musicianship, and a lifetime of musical thinking that went behind the performance, Schiff’s programme was so well thought out that, from the first notes of the Haydn to the end of the Schubert, the entire performance felt like one long breath. As we walked out of the hall after the performance and breathed in the winter air, the world seemed like a better place. Once again, in this age of ready-made music, where we can have classical music, as our local radio station reminds us constantly, “on demand”, performances like yesterday’s remind us of the magic of live music. How fortunate we are that this great artist has chosen to make Vancouver one of his musical homes.

2016 seems like such a long time to wait until Andras Schiff visits us again.  

Patrick May

The Infinite Variety of Beethoven

Well, this appears to be the year for late Beethoven.

Steven Osborne, in his wonderful recital at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts in Vancouver, gave us the composer’s Op. 90, Op. 101, and Op. 106 sonatas. Next Sunday, Sir Andras Schiff will perform Op. 109, then Nelson Goerner will essay the Op. 106 again, and Paul Lewis will return in May to play Op. 109, Op. 110, and Op. 111.

Beethoven’s Sonata in E Minor, Op. 90 is truly an unjustly neglected work. It is a work of great contrast and beauty and, strangely enough, much of it reminds me of the sonatas of Schubert, in how the materials unfold and in its melodic invention, especially in the slow movement. Osborne certainly made a strong case for this, probably really the first of the “late” piano sonatas. There were some magical moments in his playing, namely, in the final ritardando before the end of the first movement (m. 233), and at the end of the second movement, the ritardando (m. 281) followed by the accelerando that ends the work. In the slow movement, Osborne managed to make each return of the theme beautiful and convincing. Anton Rubinstein reportedly moved audiences to tears with his playing of this movement. I thought Osborne’s performance of this work was just as moving.

Between the two sonatas of Beethoven, the pianist performed Schubert’s little Klavierstück in A Major, D. 604. Like a sorbet between two main courses, this miniature, exquisitely played, was just what the audience (and maybe the pianist as well) needed to “clear the palate”.

I feel that the Sonata in A Major, Op. 101 is, pianistically speaking, the most difficult of the sonatas after the Hammerklavier. Other than technically challenging, it is terribly difficult to capture the constantly shifting moods of the music. Other than more than rising to the technical challenges Beethoven set for the pianist, Osborne successfully gave us a coherent account of the work, giving us a sense of the organic unity of the music. His playing of the march in the 2^nd movement, to me reminiscent of the march from Schumann’s Fantasy, Op. 17, was blistering. More than the excitement the dramatic moments of this work can generate, what stayed in my mind with Osborne’s performance of this work, indeed for the entire concert, were the intimate moments, like the slow movement of this sonata (Langsam und sehnsuchtvoll), especially with the return of the 1^st movement theme at m. 24.

Any performance of Beethoven’s Sonata in B-flat Major (Hammerklavier) is an event. Lasting 40 to 45 minutes, the challenge, other than the superhuman technical hurdles, is for the artist to hold all the disparate elements. I felt that Osborne more than rose to the challenges in every aspect of this great work, not neglecting any details in the score, but also clearly seeing the way ahead of him, and aware of the larger structure of the work. Osborne’s playing of the Adagio sostenuto movement, the emotional core of the entire work, was rapturous. In the final fugue, where Beethoven emancipated the trill as a mere ornament, Osborne succeeded in making the texture of this rather wild and dense movement clear and tremendously exciting.

I would have thought it impossible to follow such a work with any encore, but upon the urging of the enthusiastic audience, Steven Osborne granted us a little morsel, Brahms’ Intermezzo in E-flat Major, Op. 117, No. 1, a work as intimate as the Hammerklavier was dramatic, and played it as a benediction and thanksgiving for the afternoon of great music.

Alexandre Tharaud in Vancouver

Just before his recital in Vancouver last evening, pianist Alexandre Tharaud played nearly the same programme at Carnegie Hall, New York, where critic Vivien Schweitzer was less than complimentary. I must say I disagree with the distinguished writer of the New York Times, for I thought Tharaud gave us a well thought-out programme as well as a thoughtful, and always interesting, concert.

I thought that Tharaud was courageous to have used the score throughout the evening. With over a century of “tradition” of playing from memory, it takes a pianist of some daring to use have the music in front of him for a performance. Playing with the music should be just a matter of preference, not a moral choice, since conservatory, competitions, and piano examinations have, since the beginning of the 20^th century, stressed playing from memory, and some music teachers and conservatory professors treat playing from the score as some kind of mortal sin. I have noticed that more pianists, including Richard Goode, Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Peter Serkin, are using the score when performing.

The pianist opened his recital with Mozart’s justly famous Sonata in A Major, K. 331. In the first movement, Tharaud, I believe, seek to bring out the individual characteristic of each variation, rather than trying to blend the music from one variation to the next. His Mozart playing is one of full tone and rich colours, scintillating rather than beautiful. Tharaud’s approach to Mozart reminded me of Glenn Gould’s Mozart sonata recordings, but without the extremes in Gould’s Mozart interpretation and tempi choice. The playing in the third movement was bold and exuberant, certainly bringing out the “Turkish” flavor in the music.

Tharaud went on to give us an unmannered and dignified playing of a Chopin group – the Nocturne in E-flat Major, Op. 9, No. 2, Nocturne in C-sharp Minor, Op. posth., and the great Fantasy in F Minor, Op. 49. I appreciated how he handled the many shifts in mood, sound, and texture in the Fantasy, and how he conveyed the organic unity of the large musical canvas. The pianist’s interpretation was, however, hampered by the rather dull and wooden sounding piano. This was especially apparent in the performance of the Fantasy, where he tried hard to coax as much colour and sound out of the instrument as possible, not always successfully. This experience certainly went against the adage that “there are no bad pianos, just bad pianists.” Last evening, the pianist was just fine, but not the piano.

Schubert’s 16 German Dances, D. 783 contain some of the composer’s loveliest musical thoughts, and Tharaud’s interpretation was as musical, charming and infectious as can be. When pianist Fou Ts’ong included a set of Schubert dances in one of his Vancouver recitals, a local pianist complained that he was playing “student pieces”. No, performing these dances are far from being child’s play, and it takes a true musician to bring out the lilt and grace each of these miniatures call for. They are certainly worthy for inclusion in more recital programmes.

I felt that Tharaud’s performance of Beethoven’s Sonata No. 31 in A-flat Major, Op. 110, was highly successful. It was a beautiful, cohesive performance that effectively conveyed the overall architecture and emotional landscape of the great work, which is no small accomplishment. Over time and, perhaps, with age, the pianist would draw us more into the inner world of this late work, and bring out the other-worldly beauties of this incredible music.

Upon the urging of the audience, Tharaud gave us two delicious morsels, a Scarlatti sonata with all the fleetness and incredible finger work the music calls for, and Chopin’s Waltz in A Minor, Op. posth., underscoring the French salon flavor of this music, and utterly lovely and charming from first note to last.

We are blessed in this city to have organizations like the Vancouver Chopin Society and the Vancouver Recital Society to keep the tradition of the solo recital alive, and for brining us artists like Alexandre Tharaud. After the wonderful recital by Emmanuel Ax just a couple of weeks earlier, and with pianists like Steven Osborne, Paul Lewis and Sir Andras Schiff to look forward to in the next few months, 2015 is certainly off to a very good start!

Now if the Canadian dollar would only go back up…

An Afternoon with Emmanuel Ax

It had been many years since I heard Emmanuel Ax perform, so it was with great anticipation that I attended his solo recital yesterday at Vancouver’s only good full-size concert hall, the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts.

The programme, a French-based programme of Bizet, Rameau, Debussy and Chopin (one mustn’t forget that Chopin spent his adult life in Paris, and that his father was French), really showed Ax’s capacity for growth as a musician and artist, and his refusal to be “type-casted”. It was truly a lovely afternoon of wonderful music making by a great musician.

I only knew of Georges Bizet’s Variations Chromatiques de Concert through a recording by Glenn Gould - coupled at the time with Grieg’s E Minor Sonata. In Gould’s own words, this set of variations is, “one of the very few masterpieces for solo piano to emerge from the third quarter of the nineteenth century; its almost total neglect is a phenomenon for which I can offer no reasonable explanation.”

I was grateful to Ax for including this work in his recital. To my ears, Bizet’s Variations is very much a child of its time, with hints of influence by Chopin, Schumann (very much so), and Liszt. As I listened to it, it reminded me of another unjustly neglected work, Grieg’s Ballade in the Form of Variations on a Norwegian Folk Song, Op. 24, a piece structurally and stylistically very much in the same vein as the Bizet. I do not know whether this is a new work for Ax, but it sounded just ever so slightly less assured as the rest of his programme. Nevertheless, we should be grateful to the artist for introducing us to this lovely work.

I was also unfamiliar to the next item on Ax’s programme, Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Suite in G Major/Minor from Nouvelles Pièces de clavecin. Much of the writing for the keyboard is reminiscent of the Sonatas of Scarlatti. Ax’s playing was beautiful, and totally musical, with all the grace and lightness the music calls for. His playing certainly makes a strong case for playing music conceived for the harpsichord on the piano – not that a case ever needed to be made.

With the rest of the recital programme, the audience is on very familiar territory. Ax gave us incredibly lovely playing in his performances of Debussy’s Estampes, Hommage à Rameau, and the finger-breaking L’Isle Joyeuse – “Happy Island”, as a teacher of mine used to facetiously call it. It is perhaps no accident that Ax attended Columbia University in his youth and majored in French, for he obviously has an affinity for the music. The sound he conjured from the piano was magical, with pianissimos as gorgeous as Gieseking, but with a greater range of tone and colour than the legendary German pianist.

I could think of no greater technical and musical challenge than to negotiate all four of Chopin’s Scherzi, which was what Ax did after the interval. Vladimir Horowitz said that to successfully play Chopin’s Scherzo No. 1, the pianist needed to have both demonic and angelic qualities. Ax does not need to apologize for lacking in any of these qualities, and he certainly rose to the occasion in his technically impregnable performance of the first Scherzo. What stayed in my ears long after the concert, though, was the beauty he conjured from the piano in the middle section, taken from the Polish Christmas carol Lulajże Jezuniu (Sleep, Little Jesus). The second and fourth Scherzi received similarly convincing interpretations.

To my ears, Ax’s interpretation of the Scherzo No. 2 was more convincing than Perahia’s last year. I thought that his playing of the Scherzo No. 4, the most difficult one technically, was simply breathtaking. I had only a slight quibble with the tempo he took in the Scherzo No. 3 in C-sharp minor. To me, the quick tempo he adopted actually takes away some of the tension, and the tempestuous quality of the music.

Upon the urging of the audience, Ax ended his performance in Vancouver quietly, with Robert Schumann’s Des Abends, from his Fantasiestücke, Op. 12. It was a completely satisfying afternoon of great playing of great music.

We await Mr. Ax’s next return to Vancouver, when he will, to be sure, share the joys of his musical discoveries with us.