After having just heard on Wednesday a recital given by Juilliard piano students, it was interesting to attend a similar event yesterday evening at Mannes. Both schools are known for the excellence of their piano departments and this occasion provided an opportunity to make comparisons between the two. The theme of the Mannes recital was Pianistic Characters, 1714-2014 and was curated by faculty member Thomas Sauer.
The program, which proceeded chronologically by composer, opened with five selections - Allemande (L'Auguste), Première Courante, Sarabande (La Majesteuse), Rondeau (Les Abeilles), Gavotte (La Bourbonnaise) - taken from Ordre 1er de clavecin by François Couperin. I was not familiar with the composer's method of categorization, but according to the Wikipedia article:
"These pieces were not grouped into suites, as was the common practice, but ordres, which were Couperin’s own version of suites containing traditional dances as well as descriptive pieces. The first and last pieces in an ordre were of the same tonality, but the middle pieces could be in other closely related tonalities."
The pianist was David Mamedov a student whom I had heard perform last season and whose playing captured very well the essence of these Baroque pieces originally composed for harpsichord.
The next work consisted of selections from Beethoven's Bagatelles, Op. 33 (1802). It's surprising that these wonderful pieces, which Beethoven obviously composed to show off his own skills as a virtuoso, are not performed more often. This was the first time I'd heard them in many seasons. The playing by Shuhui (Sophia) Zhou was outstanding and I was easily able to imagine how they must have sounded when Beethoven himself sat at the keyboard.
Following this were four selections - Des Abends, Aufschwung, Warum, and Grillen - taken from Schumann's Fantasiestücke, Op. 12 (1837). For my taste, Schumann put too much thought into these works - inspired by the stories of E.T.A. Hoffmann - with their constant interplay between the imaginary characters Florestan and Eusebius. The intellectual content sometimes appears to take precedence over the music itself in Schumann's imagination. Nevertheless, these pieces were given a great performance here by Kyle Walker, another very talented student whom I had heard play last season.
I had heard on Wednesday Nos. 15-24 of Chopin's Préludes, Op. 28 (1839) and so was looking forward at Mannes to the performance of more selections from that same series. This time the pieces chosen were Nos. 1-8 and were played in spectacular fashion by Vladimir Rumyantsev. I was extremely impressed and actually thought this performance superior to that which I had heard at Juilliard.
The works of Debussy were then featured with selections taken from Préludes, Book II (1912-1913). Though the composer steadfastly rejected the characterization of his works as "Impressionistic," there is really no other word to describe them. They linger in the memory like half forgotten dreams.
Several musical portraits by Virgil Thomson were then performed. Over the course of his career, Thomson composed more than 140 musical portraits for piano. These were later cataloged by the critic Anthony Tommasini, himself the subject of one such portrait, and published in a book entitled Virgil Thomson's Musical Portraits (1986). One review of that work notes:
"At the outset of Part I, the author [Tommasini] reminds us that Virgil Thomson conceived of the musical portrait as an attempt 'to depict in an abstract instrumental composition the inner nature of his portrait subject' (p. 20). Tommasini informs us as well that the literary portraits of Gertrude Stein impelled Thomson to try to create musical portraits in which he would apply the process used by Stein in her work, a process that Thomson called 'the discipline of spontaneity' (p. 14)."
The five portraits chosen for this session were of Christopher Cox, Barbara Epstein, Franco Assetto, Craig Rutenberg and Paul Sanfacon. I have to admit I was not familiar with any of these individuals and perhaps for that reason could gain no impression of their characters from their respective portraits. Both the Debussy and Thomson works were played very well by Shuang Yu.
Kyle Walker then returned to stage to perform three fantasy pieces by Peter Lieberson composed in memory of three family members who had recently passed on. The first and third were elegiac while the second middle piece was in contrast rather jarring. I had not previously been familiar with Lieberson or his work and was surprised to discover he had been a student of Chögyam Trungpa whose works on Buddhism had at one time exerted a great deal of influence on my own thought.
The final work on the program was Commitment Issues (1967) by Edward Windels, a contemporary composer whose work I had again never before heard. The composer was present for the performance by Julia Hamos and came onstage beforehand to introduce the piece. Windels is employed in musical theater and the influence of that genre was apparent throughout this short work. It was both lively and enjoyable.
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