I went on Wednesday afternoon to Paul Hall to hear a program of solo piano works played by the Piano Performance Forum. One couldn't have asked for a more exciting selection for this full length recital (one hour and forty-five minutes with no intermission) in a program that featured some of the greatest works of Schubert, Liszt, Beethoven, Brahms and Stravinsky.
The recital began with the first two movements of Schubert's Sonata No. 15 in C major, D. 840 (1825) performed by Jiayan Sun. These were actually the only two movements Schubert troubled to complete. Like the more famous Eighth Symphony, this is an unfinished work, most probably because Schubert was not satisfied with it and put it aside to work on other pieces. The work's nickname, Reliquie, was given it by its publisher, C.F. Whistling, in 1861 either because he honestly thought this was Schubert's final work or, more disingenuously, because he wanted to provide to his customers a plausible reason for its incomplete state. But even without the final two movements, this is still a major work. Before beginning to play, Jiayan Sun quoted the critic Donald Tovey's claim that the first movement was one of Schubert's two most perfect realizations of the sonata form.
The next work was Liszt's Mephisto Waltz (1859-62) performed by Jiaqi Long. Liszt actually wrote four Mephisto Waltzes of which the best known is the No. 1 composed some twenty years before the final three. Originally written for orchestra, it was later reduced by Liszt to versions for both solo piano and for two pianos. It takes its source from Lenau, the German romantic poet who died in an insane asylum, rather than from Goethe's better known play. This programmatic piece is a musical description of a wedding party which Mephistopheles and Faust happen to pass by. Mephistopheles plays the fiddle while Faust dances in a scene that grows increasingly surreal. The wild passionate music gave Liszt an opportunity to show off to the fullest his skills on the piano.
Following the Liszt came Beethoven's Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109 (1820) performed by Yandi Chen. The Op. 109 was, of course, the first of Beethoven's final three piano sonatas and I was particularly interested in hearing it after having recently attended a recital at Carnegie Hall where András Schiff had performed the Op. 111. I think it can be argued that Beethoven, in writing the three final sonatas, felt he had exhausted all the possibilities offered him by the piano. After having completed the Op. 111, he in fact wrote that the piano was "after all an unsatisfactory instrument." His last traditional sonata composition was really the Op. 106, the Hammerklavier. The final three, on the other hand, took the sonata into new territory in which the composer can be seen questioning the form of the genre itself. The mood of the Op. 109, when compared to the Op. 106, is much softer and introspective as though Beethoven were having a conversation with himself while writing it. It's often pointed out that the first two movements contain elements that foreshadow the theme of the third movement. I think it's possible then to view the theme and variations as an attempt to find a resolution to the larger musical questions Beethoven had posed to himself in the previous two movements.
Next came Brahms's Sonata in F-sharp minor, Op. 2 (1852) performed by Qilin Sun. Brahms is customarily referred to as a Romantic and yet in temperament he seems as far removed from that designation as can be. In the majority of his works one listens in vain for any burst of spontaneity or passion. Brahms was meticulous in his craft, perhaps overly so, and carefully labored over and reworked each composition until he was satisfied with it and then burned those pieces that didn't reach his high standard. He even revisited one early work, the 1854 Piano Trio in B major, Op. 8, and painstakingly removed from it any trace of youthful ardor. The Op. 2 then is a distinct anomaly in its intensity and virtuoso flourishes, and that may be one reason Brahms did not allow it to be first publicly performed until 1882, thirty years after it was composed. The fact that he chose the C major sonata over it to be his first published work is an indication of the doubts he already harbored concerning it. Not surprisingly for such a romantic work, its dedicatee was Clara Schumann, the married woman whom he had only recently met but with whom he was already infatuated.
The afternoon ended with Stravinsky's The Firebird (1910) in a 1928 transcription for solo piano by Guido Agosti as performed by Re Zhang. Agosti was a student of Busoni and by all accounts a virtuoso pianist himself. Stage fright, however, kept him from a full time career as a performer and instead caused him to devote himself to teaching. Only a few recordings by him are known to exist. His reduction of the famous ballet, Stravinsky's first great success with the Ballets Russes consisted of three selections - Danse Infernale, Berceuse and the Finale. A Gramophone review of a 2014 Jenny Lin recording referred to the transcription as "cripplingly difficult" and it certainly seemed all that and more as Re Zhang gave it a bravura performance that concluded the recital. It would have been difficult in any event to have followed so exciting a piece.
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