Friday, February 17, 2017

Juilliard Piano Performance Forum Recital: Mozart, Brahms, Schumann and Liszt

On Wednesday afternoon I went to Paul Hall to hear a roughly ninety minute recital given under the auspices of the school's Piano Performance Forum.  There were five pianists, each of whom - except the first - played a single major work from the solo repertoire.  Almost all these pieces were taken from the Romantic era and even the most notable exception, a Mozart sonata, was so melancholy in character that it fit perfectly with the general mood of the performance.

The first pianist to take the stage was Rachel Breen who proceeded to play four works by Scriabin, Bach and Chopin with only the slightest pause between each.  The works were Scriabin's Prelude in C major, Op. 11, No 1; Bach's Chorale Prelude Ich ruf zu dir, Jesu Christ, BWV 177 as arranged for piano by Ferruccio Busoni in 1898; Chopin's Waltz in A-flat major, Op. 69, No. 1 (1835) nicknamed Valse de l'adieu (the "Farewell Waltz") and finally the same composer's Nocturne in B major, Op. 62, No. 1 (1846).

The twenty-four preludes that comprise Scriabin's Op. 11 were composed between 1888 and 1896 and were among his earliest published works.  At the time, he was still deeply enough under the influence of Chopin to have been inspired by that composer's Op. 28.  The No. 1 was accordingly a thoroughly Romantic piece that set the mood for the three works the pianist played afterwards.  While the Bach prelude may have been a bit austere in its original form, Busoni's masterful transcription imparted to it such tenderness that it did not seem out of place in this sequence and it served well as an introduction to the two Chopin pieces whose mood could perhaps best be described as wistful, most especially in that sad waltz that marked the composer's parting from his former fiancee Maria Wodzińska.

The next musician to appear onstage was Christian DeLuca performing Mozart's Sonata No. 8 in A minor, K. 310 (1778).  The sonata is only one of two that Mozart composed in a minor key and, based on its date of composition, has traditionally been associated with the grief Mozart experienced over the death of his mother earlier that year.  There were other difficulties in the composer's life during that period - his dissatisfaction over his position in Salzburg and his disappointment at Aloysia Weber's rejection of his romantic overtures - and these too may be reflected in the sonata's bleak sonority that seems more appropriate to Beethoven in his middle period than to Mozart.  Although this is one of the composer's better known works from his final years in Salzburg, it's not that often performed and this was the first time I'd heard it in quite a long while.

Next came two works from the late Romantic era.  First, Jae Young Kim performed Brahms's Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, Op. 9 (1854).  I had not previously been familiar with this piece and hearing it performed live was for me the highlight of Wednesday's recital.  It's a wonderful work and I don't think it would be going too far to consider it Brahms's first great masterpiece in any genre.  The theme itself was taken from the fourth of Schumann's Bunte Blätter, Op. 99, upon which Brahms then composed a set of sixteen variations, many of which contain references to other Schumann works.  The circumstances under which the variations were written are well worth noting.  Brahms had only become acquainted with the Schumanns in October of the preceding year when he had received from both Robert and Clara a rapturous reception.  In fact, Schumann went so far as to praise his newfound protege in print in an article in his Neue Zeitschrift für Musik.  Then, in February 1854, Schumann attempted suicide and had to be confined to a mental institution.  It must have been apparent at once to everyone concerned that Schumann's breakdown was complete and irreversible.  One wonders then at Brahms's own state of mind as he composed the variations based on Schumann's music, dedicated to Schumann's wife, and written immediately after Schumann's own Geistervariationen.  Could Brahms have already begun to see himself as the older composer's musical heir?  Perhaps Schumann's famous statement in his Neue Zeitschrift article that Brahms was "fated to give expression to the times in the highest and most ideal manner" gave the younger man the confidence he needed to achieve a genuine artistic breakthrough.

The music that followed was by Schumann himself, four sections from his Humoreske in B flat major, Op. 20 (1839), as performed by Taek-Gi Lee.  This was among the last of the compositions for solo piano to which Schumann had dedicated much of the 1830's.  The third of a trio composed during his stay in Vienna, it shared some similarities with the other two works, Arabeske and Blumenstück, including the adoption of a one movement format.  Also like those others, it left behind the playful worlds of Kinderszenen and Carnaval to address a much more complex set of emotions.  No Florestan or Eusebius here but instead, in Humoreske at least, a series of jagged shifts in mood.  Years before his breakdown in 1854, Schumann had already begun to experience severe depression and it's possible that the work's unsettling dislocations may have been the result of his already deteriorating mental state.  They may also account for the work's less than enthusiastic critical reception.  In spite of this, I've always considered Humoreske to be one of Schumann's greatest creations and very much enjoyed hearing it so finely played at this recital.

The program closed with pianist Yilan Zhao performing Liszt's virtuoso showpiece, Rhapsodie espagnole (1863).  Liszt had toured both Spain and Portugal in 1844-1845, years before this piece was written and yet something of those countries' elegance and profound musical traditions must have stirred his Romantic temperament and have remained in his mind until he finally addressed them in his own work.  Despite the inclusion of variations on the ancient Folies d'Espagne et jota aragonesa, this is very much the Spanish idiom as interpreted by a more northern sensibility.  Liszt was not striving here so much for authenticity, as he did in his Hungarian Rhapsodies alongside which this work was originally published, as he was seeking to capture the essence of the Iberian spirit.  He did quite well with it too.  The Spanish flavor appears natural and never forced.  And what a thrilling opportunity for a pianist to show his or her skills at the keyboard.

As was the case at last week's Wednesdays at One installment, this recital afforded New York's music lovers yet another occasion on which to hear some of the finest piano works in the repertoire performed by top level musicians who consistently displayed a deep passion for all the works on the program and who played them impeccably well.

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