Critic’s Notebook: Incomprehension and Poulenc at a Kirill Gerstein Recital

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Konzerthaus: Chopin, ganz unschmeichelhaft

Chopin, torn, pensive, cerebral

F.Busoni, Piano Concerto K.Gerstein, S.Oramo, Boston Symphony Orchestra myrios

G.Fauré, Nocturnes Daniel Grimwood Peter Edition

Kirill Gerstein is a pianist I like greatly. Hard to believe it had been ten years since I last heard him in two astonishing Strauss-evenings, one with Enoch Arden [Best Recordings of 2020] and another with the Burleske. At a recent recital at the Vienna Konzerthaus’ Mozart Hall (February 24th), I didn’t understand what he was getting at, though. Faced with reasonably popular fare, as opposed to the challenges that are the above Strauss or his masterful account of the beast of a Busoni piano concerto, he introduced a pensive, cerebral, and very fragmented element to Chopin, whether the late Polonaise-Fantaisie op.61, the (very “Grave” and desensualized) Fantaisie op.49 in F minor, or the Grande Valse brilliante op.42, which was so heavy on the rubato that it gave up its waltz-character voluntarily. As the music dissolved into its individual parts, it demanded a concentration to stick with Gerstein and what he might have meant. A task beyond my abilities, that evening.

The last Nocturne of Fauré (No.13, op.119) fared better. Usually, the Fauré and Chopin meet somewhere on a common plane of romantic solo piano music, as Fauré is usually performed with an eye to his seductive, charming side. Here the pointillist Nocturne was closer to Alban Berg than to Satie or Debussy: Dark, threatening, chromatically charged, and very much true to its 1921 year of creation. Whatever Schumann wanted to say with his Faschingsschwank wasn’t clear here. Yes, this hymn of disappointment to Vienna isn’t funny to begin with. But did it need to be so hard-driven, so purposefully avoiding natural agogics, so decidedly undermining any expectation? Like so much this evening, it felt hard fought for, pensive, and wildly introspective. Animated on the outside, hollow on the inside. Ditto Liszt’s Polonaise 223/2, Rachmaninov/Kreisler’s Liebesleid (notably, fittingly no Liebesfreud), and the two funereal Armenian “Dances” by Komitas of the encore – which reminded of the terrible second anniversary that day.

The only silver lining was Poulenc. Not only for being on the program in the first place, which is rare enough. The Three Intermezzi managed to do what Poulenc does so well: Fuse seriousness and humor. They even elicited a few heartening giggles from the audience. Still, I don’t think I’ve ever understood or ‘gotten’ so little at a recital.


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Critic’s Notebook: Anderszewski Recital, Musikverein

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Piotr Anderszewski: Chopin-Mazurkas verwandeln sich bei ihm in Muränen

A Masterclass in Relaxation and Rubato: Piotr Anderszewski at the Musikverein

K.Szymanowski, B.Bartók, L.Janáček, Mazurkas Op. 50, 14 Bagatelles etc. Piotr Anderszewski Warner

Piotr Anderszweski was only the replacement, at his piano recital at Vienna’s Musikverein: Maria João Pires had been scheduled to perform but had to cancel. Not a shabby replacement. Few patrons in the well-filled Golden Hall could have complained beforehand; fewer still afterwards. For one, it’s nice that he isn’t a piano-bench dancer, who tries to tell you with his contortions how you are supposed to feel about the music, rather than making you feel that way through how he plays. He’s got a steady hand at the wheel, and wields a (surprisingly) wild rubato with it, which turned the three Chopin Mazurkas op.59 into relaxed Nocturnes that would, every so often, suddenly, rear their head, and shoot forward like a moray eel aiming for the unsuspecting diver’s naked toe. At those moments, when, after stealing so much time in some places, he had to give it all back at the end of a phrase, the notes became pushed together to the point of cluster chords. Five (out of 20) of Szymanowski’s Mazurkas op.50 varied between relaxed and disembodied, almost indifferent on the one hand (metaphorically, not literally), and lively and besotted with tonal color on the other.

Bartók’s 14 Bagatelles, op.6, are little character pieces that come in all shapes and colors, with cathedral-like grandness one second, prickly little will-o’-the-wisps the next, tickling the ears, turning in the wind this way, then that, and adding a share of lovelorn bitterness. Anderszewski made them come alive, just moving his fingers, entirely unfazed. Where the opening E minor Bach Partita BWV 830 had been so flexible, it had into something intriguing yet almost worryingly romantic, the concluding B major Partita BWV 825, was exalted and sublime, with a steady pulse and forward momentum, very lively (Courante), then exuding celestial peace (Sarabande), a tinkling of bells (Menuet), and dashing, compelling in the concluding Gigue. Bach and Bartók as encores, too, and especially the latter’s Three Hungarian Folk Songs from Csík shone in coy, playful light, sounded almost like Mompou.

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Briefly Noted: Seong-Jin Cho adds to Chopin set

Chopin, 4 Scherzi / Piano Concerto No. 2, Seong-Jin Cho, London Symphony Orchestra, Gianandrea Noseda (released on June 25, 2021) DG 00028948604395 | 76'56" [2016]

One of the best artists Deutsche Grammophon has in its catalogue these days is Seong-Jin Cho. Since winning the International Chopin Piano Competition in 2015, the South Korean pianist has been releasing a series of impressive recordings on the Yellow Label. The second of these discs devoted to Chopin appeared in 2021. Like the first installment, which paired the first of Chopin's piano concertos with the four ballades, on this one the four scherzi introduce the second piano concerto. The digital version of the album, and not the CD, contains an Easter egg of three additional tracks: the “Revolutionary” Étude (Op. 10, no. 12), an impromptu (Op. 29, no. 1) and a nocturne (Op. 9, no. 2).

Cho has formed a devoted collaboration with Gianandrea Noseda in the last few years, and the Italian conductor led the London Symphony Orchestra in these recordings of the Chopin concertos. Sadly, Cho has not played either one in his appearances with the National Symphony Orchestra (Beethoven 5 in 2017, Ravel G Major in 2019). Cho's last slated appearance with the local band, for Shostakovich 1, was canceled in March 2020 at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The pianist finally returns to the nation's capital tomorrow, to play Brahms 1 with the NSO in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall (January 12 to 14).

These recordings feature what likely rocketed Cho to the top of the Chopin Competition: a fierce technique, with strengths in speed and accuracy more than sheer power, and a poetic touch that captures the more tender and vulnerable sides of the Polish composer. His interpretation of the four scherzi emphasizes the remarkable fluidity of his fingers, and in the virtuosic demands of the concerto's outer movements he does not disappoint. To score the highest marks, however, the soloist has to give the slow movement the right expressive élan, and Cho glides through the many ornamented roulades in elegant legato, without tipping into gauzy sentimentality.

Briefly Noted: Kissin plays Salzburg

Evgeny Kissin, Salzburg Recital (Berg, Chopin, Gershwin, Khrennikov) (released on September 2, 2022) DG 00028948629947 | 97'32"

Evgeny Kissin's most recent recital in Washington was scheduled for May of 2020. Because that was obviously canceled, it has been a long drought since the celebrated Russian pianist last appeared here. To fight the withdrawal symptoms, your critic has turned to Kissin's newest recording, captured live at the Großes Festspielhaus in Salzburg in August of 2021.

The last several years have brought significant changes to Kissin's life. In 2017, during a break from performing, he married a childhood friend and wrote a memoir. In July of 2021, just before Kissin played this recital, his piano teacher, Anna Pavlovna Kantor, died at the age of 98. She was much more than a teacher to Kissin, becoming a member of his family and living with them for the last thirty years. "She was my only piano teacher, and everything I am able to do on the piano I owe to her," Kissin has written, dedicating this recital to her memory.

One imagines that the pandemic shutdowns were difficult for Kissin, who has always seemed to be most at ease while playing on stage, as if music were in a way his first language. "I’m simply more inspired in front of an audience," he is quoted saying in the liner notes of this two-disc set. He played this recital to a full house, something he said was very important to him, even in the face of coronavirus restrictions. Although he once told me backstage at the Kennedy Center that he had no interest in composing his own music, one of the Salzburg encores is his own Dodecaphonic Tango. Composition is now an interest of his: Kissin, who has been vocally critical of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is also composing a piano trio in response to this unprovoked war.

Among other curiosities, the program opens with a prickly performance of Berg's Piano Sonata, op. 1. A decidedly idiosyncratic rendition of Gershwin's Preludes follows a set of short pieces by Tikhon Khrennikov (1913-2007), a Russian composer and Soviet functionary. The choice is definitely odd for political reasons, given Khrennikov's consistent holding of the party line during the darkest years of the USSR and even after its dissolution. Listeners are then treated to the palate cleansing of Kissin's inimitable Chopin. Unable to let go of the audience, Kissin offered four encores, as usual some of the most exhilirating moments.

American Ballet Theater: New Choreography at Kennedy Center

Blain Hoven and Daniil Simkin, Serenade after Plato's Symposium, American Ballet Theater (photo by Rosalie Connor)
American Ballet Theater has taken over the Kennedy Center Opera House this week, offering a smorgasbord of new ballets. The first program, seen on Wednesday night, was a combination of three choreographies from the last decade, plus a Jerome Robbins classic from 1976. The second night cast included some of the company's best dancers -- meaning that the usual vocal group of Misty Copeland followers was in the audience -- and some new discoveries.

The best part of the Leonard Bernstein anniversary celebrations, otherwise a seemingly endless sequence of celebrated mediocrities, arrived unexpectedly with Serenade after Plato's Symposium, perhaps Alexei Ratmansky's most important work to date, premiered by ABT in 2016. The music is Bernstein's, a rather gorgeous five-movement violin concerto premiered in Venice in 1954, setting to music the seven speakers of Plato's Symposium, invited to extol the virtues of love. Seven men, mostly from the group of rising soloists, brought this evening of conversation and intense philosophical argument to life, with Hee Seo taking the startling single female role, entering in a starkly lit rectangular opening in the rear curtain. Violin soloist Kobi Malkin struggled with intonation on the numerous double-stops of the solo part, but the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra supported him ably.

The Robbins piece, Other Dances, was originally a vehicle for Mikhail Baryshnikov, but it was the woman of the pairing, Sarah Lane, who most stood out for the grace and buoyancy of her movements. Emily Wong played the selection of Chopin pieces, four mazurkas and a concluding, spirited waltz, at a piano on stage.

Other Reviews: Alastair Macaulay, Review: In Gala, American Ballet Theater Is Open to Debate (New York Times, May 17, 2016) ---, A Big House, Big Names, New Twists (New York Times, May 25, 2011) Gia Kourlas, Review: At American Ballet Theater, Mostly Millepied (New York Times, October 26, 2017)

The most recent piece, premiered just last fall, was the spirited I Feel the Earth Move, with choreography by Benjamin Millepied set to music by Philip Glass. Stage hands cleared away all of the curtains and scrims from the stage, revealing the catwalks and bare walls, as well as the lighting instruments above. Danced to a rather loud recording, this ballet was hyperactive, seemingly in constant motion, perhaps an expression of individual freedom against repression, represented by the female corps, which appeared marching in step, bandannas over some of their faces.

Christopher Wheeldon's story ballets have not been my cup of tea for the most part, but this more abstract short choreography had greater appeal. Barbara Bilach took the solo part of Benjamin Britten's Diversions for Piano (left hand) and Orchestra, again conducted with abundant energy by Ormsby Wilkins. It was another beautiful score to discover, brought to life by dance, made better by it as the Bernstein had been earlier. The variations form worked elegantly for dance, as Wheeldon has crafted pairs, solos, and group numbers for each brief movement. Misty Copeland finally appeared on stage, for a time-stopping solo in the fourth variation ("Rubato"). Her pairing in the exquisite pas de deux for the tenth variation ("Adagio"), with Cory Stearns stepping in for Gray Davis, was the highlight of the evening, muscularity merged with poetry.

American Ballet Theater performs Whipped Cream, with a forgotten ballet score by Richard Strauss, tonight through February 4.

Ionarts at Large: BSO Tackles Difficult Work at Tanglewood

Conductor Giancarlo Guerrero leads the BSO and pianist Ingrid Fliter (photo by Hilary Scott)
It was reasonable to leave the Friday evening concert of the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood in a relaxed mood. A cool breeze blanketed the Koussevitzky Music Shed as the orchestra finished a symphony-free program with soft, melodic works: Benjamin Britten’s arrangement of the Blumine movement from Mahler's third first symphony, and Brahms’ Second Serenade in A. Nashville Symphony Orchestra Music Director Giancarlo Guerrero led both works ably, with strong control over sound and phrasing. Skip ahead 24 hours to Saturday night and anyone still feeling the calming effects of those works was shaken out of their relaxed state by the pounding E minor chords for percussion and brass of John Adams’s massive Harmonielehre.

Guerrero again was leading the Boston players, providing relative consistency after five weekends of guest conductors as well as one weekend where Music Director Andris Nelsons was on the podium. With a schedule at Tanglewood that asks the orchestra to mount three different programs each weekend with minimal rehearsal, programming Harmonielehre was somewhat risky. Mixing elements of minimalism — pulsating rhythms, repetition and quicksilver ornamentation — with more traditional harmonies, the dense, three-part work is loaded with constant movement and is a heavy lift on few rehearsals. Perhaps this explains why it was the orchestra’s first performance of what has become one of the most successful post-WWII compositions.

Fortunately the BSO had several factors in its favor. A technically sound conductor with a clear beat, Guerrero is very comfortable with contemporary music. Second was the orchestra’s world-class skill and musicianship. The combination yielded an accurate first performance, although one that seemed to sacrifice speed and interpretation for safety, particularly in the first movement, whose lack of energy negated many of Adams’s musical effects.

The slower Part II, “The Anfortas Wound,” named for the legendary Fisher King, yielded a far better result. The somber movement’s second climax, quoting the screaming chords of the Adagio of Mahler’s tenth symphony, was appropriately vexing. Ditto an extended piccolo trumpet solo, performed with a gorgeous, otherworldly sound by Thomas Rolfs. The contrasting third part, “Meister Eckhardt and Quackie,” emanates from a dream Adams had of the German theologian (1260-1328) flying with Adams’ daughter, Emily, on his shoulders. Accordingly it’s a swirling, uplifting movement. Toward the end of it, Guerrero increased the tempo and energy level, leading to a triumphant conclusion on an E-flat major chord.

Other Reviews: Ken Ross, Soloist-turned-conductor impresses with NSO’s Mahler (Mass Live, August 7)

The Argentine pianist Ingrid Fliter had the unenviable task of being a late replacement for Daniil Trifonov, one of classical music’s current “It” pianists, whose ear malady prevented him from traveling. A Chopin specialist, Fliter was more than up to the task of dispatching Chopin’s second piano concerto. Her light touch and fine technique were well suited to this composition, completed when Chopin was just 20. It made one wonder how a more demonstrative player, like Trifonov, would have handled the concerto. Again for Guerrero and the BSO, though, it was more a matter of keeping soloist and orchestra together throughout the piece than making bold interpretive statements. Fliter cooperated, keeping tempi steady and eschewing rubato, allowing the music, rather than her technical prowess, to take the lead. To his credit, Guerrero proved a sensitive collaborator, following Fliter expertly. As was the case in the Adams, Guerrero was most effective in the middle slow movement, said to be a paean to Chopin’s boyhood amours, as he correctly highlighted the interplay between Fliter and bassoonist Richard Svoboda.

Guerrero’s comfort with slow movements gave your reviewer concern about the final work, Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks of Richard Strauss. There was little need to worry. The orchestra bounded through the Strauss, a Boston Symphony staple, alternating between loud and soft passages, climaxing with a raucous gallows scene. Hornist James Sommerville handled the solo horn parts with style and William R. Hudgins was appropriately irreverent on clarinet. Indeed Guerrero proved adept in both quiet moments and boisterous ones.

Phillips Camerata Marks the Phillips Terquasquigenary

Stravinsky, Dumbarton Oaks Concerto (inter alia), Orchestra of St. Luke's, R. Craft

Charles T. Downey, Phillips Collection reproduces 1941 inaugural concert of weekly series (Washington Post, May 31)

The Phillips Collection presented its first public concert in 1941. On Sunday afternoon, the museum marked the 75th anniversary of its weekly concert series by reproducing the music played at that first concert, a program of pieces for two pianos. The Phillips Camerata, the venue’s resident ensemble, performed some of the pieces in the same format and others in expanded arrangements.

Pianists Audrey Andrist and Lisa Emenheiser played the ­two-piano pieces, and previous partnerships together, for the 21st Century Consort, gave them a solid ensemble footing. The daunting technical challenges of Saint-Saëns’s “Variations on a Theme of Beethoven, Op. 35,” were not exactly smooth in this performance, but the duo never played it safe, perhaps taking the funeral march variation a tad too fast to savor its harmonic vagaries... [Continue reading]

Phillips Camerata
With Audrey Andrist and Lisa Emenheiser, pianists
Phillips Collection

#morninglistening: Ashkenazy's Legendary Études

#morninglistening to #Chopin w/the young Ashkenazy on the legendary 50s Etudes finally re-… https://t.co/VE0eS2rqkv pic.twitter.com/UQzjpbgffd

— Jens F. Laurson (@ClassicalCritic) December 4, 2015

Next to Pollini, these are th op.10 Études to have!

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#morninglistening: Iddo and the Mazurkas

#morninglistening to #Chopin Mazurkas on Mirare w/Iddo Bar-Shaï.#classical #classicalmus… https://t.co/KrVaPTlQf2 pic.twitter.com/FeSJ4VhC0D

— Jens F. Laurson (@ClassicalCritic) December 3, 2015

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#morninglistening: Yundi Chopin

#morninglistening to #Chopin Preludes w/@YundiMusic post-#Chopin17 on @mercuryclassics#c… https://t.co/yQg7JdFOpR pic.twitter.com/k9X2S85TYu

— Jens F. Laurson (@ClassicalCritic) October 31, 2015

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Pollini Struggles in London

We welcome this review by guest contributor Martin Fraenkel, from the Royal Festival Hall in London.

Chopin, Nocturnes, M. Pollini (DG, 2006)

Maurizio Pollini’s only 2016 London piano recital took place on Wednesday at the Royal Festival Hall. Originally scheduled a week earlier, the concert was postponed due to the performer's ill health. Once, Pollini's commanding stage presence demanded respect and expectation, quite apart from the unrelenting brilliance of his technique. Now appearing older than his 74 years, he rather shuffled onto the stage, slightly stooped, and the impact was not quite the same. The sense that time is catching up with the great postwar generation of European musicians was heightened by Pollini’s unscheduled decision to start the concert with Schoenberg’s Six Little Piano Pieces, op. 19. Written following the death of Schoenberg’s mentor, Mahler, Pollini dedicated them to the memory of the late Pierre Boulez. Stark, essential, and lasting in total five minutes, the effect was profound.

The scheduled Schumann Allegro, op. 8, and Fantasie, op. 17, filled the first half. The impact of this passionate romanticism seemed strangely misplaced after the Schoenberg. Pollini’s well-drawn melodic lines provided some tender moments, especially in the third movement of the Fantasie. The at-times fiendishly difficult fast passages, however, rather revealed the declining powers of Pollini’s finger work. The sense that he was straining to the limit was only emphasized by his rather audible singing which broke out intermittently. One began to fear what might happen in the Fantasie’s second movement, described in Harriet Smith’s program note as a “real graveyard for pianists” and not for the “faint of heart.” In the event, Pollini hung on gamely, if no longer imperiously.

Other Reviews: Andrew Clements, Maurizio Pollini review – glimpses of greatness amid the gloom (The Guardian, March 3) Michael Church, Maurizio Pollini, Royal Festival Hall, classical review: Exquisitely wrought and flawlessly delivered (The Independent, March 3)

The second half was dedicated to Chopin, with whom Pollini has always been closely associated. And indeed, the struggles of the first half gave way to deep exploration of the highest order. A steady rendering of the op. 60 Barcarolle was followed by the evening’s highlight, the op. 55 nocturnes. The link between Schoenberg and Chopin is slender indeed, but Pollini again seemed most at ease seeking out the inner emotion which lurks beneath the outward simplicity of structure. This was followed by an intense Polonaise-Fantasie in A-flat major and an assured performance of the Scherzo No. 3, op. 39.

Two further Chopin encores ensued. With many members of London’s burgeoning expatriate Italian population among them, the audience was by now on its feet. One rather felt that this was a mark of a nation’s pride and gratitude, not so much for the evening but for a great career perhaps nearing its end.

Washington Debut of Tomer Gewirtzman

Rachmaninoff, Piano Sonatas, N. Lugansky (Naïve, 2012)

Charles T. Downey, A young virtuoso makes his D.C. debut
Washington Post, November 11

Israeli pianist Tomer Gewirtzman, 25, one of the six winners of the Young Concert Artists auditions in New York on Saturday, made his Washington debut Monday evening, hosted by the Embassy of Israel under the auspices of the Embassy Series. His concert highlighted both formidable virtuosity and stylistic sensitivity.

Pieces by Bach and Haydn seemed to show an awareness of historically informed performance practice and the sounds of both the harpsichord and the fortepiano. Gewirtzman kept his foot off the sustaining pedal for Bach’s Toccata in E Minor, BWV 914... [Continue reading]

Tomer Gewirtzman, piano
Embassy Series
Embassy of Israel

Evgeny Kissin, Master of Prokofiev

Chopin, Sonatas (inter alia), E. Kissin (Sony re-releases, 2014)

One of the highlights of any Ionarts season is a concert by Evgeny Kissin. The latest opportunity to hear the Russian virtuoso came on Wednesday night, in an uncompromising program presented by Washington Performing Arts in the Music Center at Strathmore. An inner core of deeply felt emotional masterpieces -- Prokofiev's fourth sonata and sets of Chopin nocturnes and mazurkas -- bolstered by showier Beethoven and Liszt on the ends. Those more profound pieces at the heart of the program were the high point, while Kissin left no doubt as to his near-unassailable technique in the outer ones.

Kissin remains at the top of my list among living interpreters of the music of Chopin, an impression maintained by this performance. In his hands, these pieces had an extemporaneous feel to them, beginning with the gesture of beginning the first nocturne on the program (B-flat minor, op. 9/1) with the right hand almost from nothing, hesitant even to start the piece. Kissin has a fluidity of rubato that sounds like improvisation, not rushed or dragged out sentimentally, but hesitating and impetuous in equal measure, with even the embellishments to the melody sounding not practiced but added on the fly. In all the nocturnes, there were degrees of exquisite softness and exceptional freedom in the runs of the right hand. Six mazurkas, even more intimate pieces, were exquisitely pondered, to the point of almost ignoring the audience: the blue notes savored in op. 6/1, the hurdy-gurdy sections of op. 6/2 and op. 7/3 dark and creaking, the middle section of op. 7/2 more martial.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Kissin slightly less than telling at Strathmore recital (Washington Post, April 24) John von Rhein, Evgeny Kissin regales fans with masterful Chopin and more (Chicago Tribune, April 20) Lawrence A. Johnson, Kissin’s distinctive mastery brings illumination on a rainy afternoon (Chicago Classical Review, April 20) Tim Ashley, Evgeny Kissin review – reflection and severity from former prodigy (The Guardian, March 23)

After the masterful rendition of Prokofiev's eighth sonata heard at his 2009 recital, as well as his recording of the composer's concertos, one expected great things of the fourth sonata (C minor, op. 29). Prokofiev built this sonata from themes of earlier pieces in his old notebooks, and the piece feels heavily layered, strands on top of strands that Kissin teased apart with careful patience, the first two movements steeped in melancholy but also wistful tenderness. The finale provided all of the fireworks Kissin needed to end the first half, at times cantankerous, heavy-handed, even clownish, all around extraordinary.

The only minor disappointment was a somewhat willful performance of Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata (C major, op. 53), with the first movement bouncing around in tempo, many of the runs just slightly mushed together and the second theme weighty, maybe a little clunky. Little changes and hesitations here and there seemed over-thought, which made the slow movement viscous and oozing. Then there was the third movement, taken at a moderate pace, the bell-like main theme's first note played as if it were an anacrusis. Kissin's trills were immaculate as they buzzed around the trill-laden statement of the theme. The counterpart of this display was Liszt's outrageous Hungarian Rhapsody no. 15 ("Rákóczi March") at the recital's end, which whipped the audience into a frenzy satisfied only by three encores: Chopin's Nocturne in F# minor (op. 48/2), Liszt's arrangement of Paganini's "La Chasse" caprice, and the march from Prokofiev's opera Love for Three Oranges. So much the better that Washington Performing Arts will not make us wait two years for the next concert by Evgeny Kissin, who will return to the Kennedy Center on October 28.

As a postscript, it bears saying, on this official 100th anniversary of the massacre of Armenians in Turkey, that Evgeny Kissin has spoken out for the recognition of this tragedy as a genocide. After the speech by Pope Francis to the Synod of the Armenian Catholic Patriarchal Church earlier this month, more governments may be willing to say the same.

Stephen Hough Plays with Edge

Grieg, Lyric Pieces, S. Hough (Hyperion, 2015)

We have seen a lot of Stephen Hough in the area in recent years, after many concerto appearances with the National Symphony Orchestra (2014, 2012) and Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (2013, 2009). So it was surprising to learn that his recital on Wednesday night -- no April Fool's -- was the British-born pianist's first in Washington, presented by Washington Performing Arts in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. Like any performance by Hough, this impeccably crafted concert was marked by a characteristic precision, a meticulousness of touch that bordered on the downright finicky. The only problem is that the two composers on this program, Debussy and Chopin, do not necessarily benefit the most from such an approach.

In a rhetorical flourish, Hough arranged the pieces into a near-perfect chiasmus, with the four ballades of Chopin at the center, broken up by intermission -- even the re-ordering of the ballades, 2-1-3-4, served the mirror form, putting the most difficult ballades on the outside. Hough applied a broad rubato to the Debussy pieces, both stretching and rushing ahead, that still managed to sound somehow systematic, beginning with the whispered La plus que lente. The three movements of Estampes bristled with all kinds of pleasing details, but one missed a more velvety touch, especially in legato phrases that did not quite melt together, which would have added some misty brushstrokes to obscure the overly clean lines. Hough's rendition of Children's Corner, with many of its more challenging passages played with mechanical efficiency, seemed at times to want to show a kinship with Stravinsky's more primitivistic style. I felt no more comfortable with Hough playing Golliwog's Cakewalk than I did with the Salzburg Marionettes' use of the same character in La boîte à joujoux -- as if the goal of not sanitizing art could make one feel any more comfortable with resurrecting the minstrel show in blackface. L'Isle Joyeuse, played without much sustaining pedal, felt dry and percussive, and in his drive to make a climactic final statement, Hough walloped the keyboard far beyond what seemed necessary.

Other Articles: Anne Midgette, The right Hough: Pianist delivers superb recital at Terrace Theater (Washington Post, April 3) Janelle Gelfand, A conversation with piano star Stephen Hough (Cincinnati Enquirer, March 29)

Chopin's ballades had their own shortcomings, none of them technical, as Hough's handling of the music's challenges, even in nos. 2 and 4, was mostly solid, with only some right-hand stickiness here and there. It was more the slow parts that fell flat: the encoded poetry of no. 2's slow theme rushed and played without a true legato touch, the rubato run amok in no. 1, so one lost almost all sense of the meter at times. No. 4 was even a little boring until the greater technical challenges kicked in. Only in three encores did Hough seem to let his hair down and relax: two Chopin nocturnes (op. 15/2, op. 9/2) and a truly cooky arrangement of a piece from Minkus's score for the ballet Don Quixote, played with a sense of whimsy close to that of Chico Marx.

Beatrice Rana Returns

Chopin, Preludes / Scriabin, Sonata No. 2, B. Rana, recorded at the Concours Musical International de Montréal (ATMA Classique, 2012)

Charles T. Downey, Beatrice Rana, a pianist, returns to D.C.
Washington Post, November 4, 2014

Last year Beatrice Rana, on the heels of her silver medal at the Van Cliburn Competition, gave her Washington-area debut at Wolf Trap. The Italian pianist was back on Saturday afternoon for a concert at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, presented on the Hayes Piano Series by Washington Performing Arts. Her startling technique remains among the most faultless of young pianists today, and it was displayed, in this recital, in some dazzling repertoire.

Rana took some of the movements of Bach’s first partita (B-flat major, BWV 825) with rhythmic freedom... [Continue reading]

Beatrice Rana, piano
Washington Performing Arts
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

Joshua Wright @ Kennedy Center

Charles T. Downey, Pianist Joshua Wright shows his skills in recital at the Kennedy Center
Washington Post, October 18, 2014

A concert pianist must meet high technical standards, but he will gain an audience only if he has even rarer gifts — touch, intelligence and the ability to surprise.

Joshua Wright, a prize winner at this year’s Washington International Piano Competition, demonstrated those qualities in a recital Thursday night in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater presented by the Friday Morning Music Club. The pianist also can be a showman, evident in his performance this year on the television show “America’s Got Talent,” which involved paint and smoke pouring out of a white grand piano... [Continue reading]

Joshua Wright, piano
Friday Morning Music Club
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

'Les Sylphides' and Ashton from ABT

Les Sylphides, American Ballet Theater (photo by Rosalie O'Connor)
American Ballet Theater is back at the Kennedy Center Opera House this week, only one year after its last visit. Before its main offering, Marius Petipa and Alexander Gorsky's choreography of Minkus's Don Quixote (April 17 to 20), the company is dancing a far more interesting triple-bill, seen on Tuesday night. It paired two classics of different kinds, Michel Fokine's Les Sylphides and Frederick Ashton's The Dream, with a brand-new work choreographed by ABT principal dancer Marcelo Gomes called Aftereffect. Of course, Don Quixote is fine and all, but I was really hoping to see the company's new choreography of The Tempest by Alexei Ratmansky.

Les Sylphides is a plot-less ballet blanc that Fokine created first in St. Petersburg, where it was known as Chopiniana -- in which form it was danced here by the Mariinsky Ballet in 2012. It is mostly about the corps de ballet, and thus it featured the outstanding discipline of the ABT's women, who moved with impeccable unity and precision through every graceful move and arboreal formation, down to the smallest arch of the back or port de bras, much of it en pointe. Relatively new principal dancer Hee Seo stood out among the soloists for her delicate solo in the Prelude (Chopin's Prelude in A major, op. 28/7). Stella Abrera, although lovely in the first Mazurka, was inhibited somewhat in the pas de deux by being paired with the less accomplished Joseph Gorak as the Poet, the only male dancer in the ballet. Fokine originally used an orchestration of these Chopin piano pieces by Glazunov, but ABT has reconstituted the orchestration by Benjamin Britten, which it commissioned in 1941 and was long thought lost. While perhaps not a masterful orchestration, it has lots of effects involving the harp, which added to the dreamy nature of the choreography.

Mendelssohn, Ein Sommernachtstraum, La Chapelle Royale, Collegium Vocale Gent, Orchestre des Champs-Elysées, P. Herreweghe (Harmonia Mundi, 2012)

In Aftereffect, Gomes created a sort of masculine counterpart to the willowy Les Sylphides. Opening with a burst of male energy, the choreography has eight male dancers, costumed in blue leggings and bare-chested, run across the stage. One dancer remains, convulsed by movements that are as much about agitation and restlessness as the first ballet was about stillness and floating. In an effect that recalls multiple-exposure series of photographs like those of Eadweard Muybridge, the lead dancer is eventually shadowed by a second, an augmentation that continues to include the entire group. It was intensely physical, at times whimsical, and even a little silly, in a good way, but it could have been danced in silence since it did not really match up to the music Gomes selected, the first movement of Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence, in the roughest performance of the night from the string players of the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra.

Other Reviews: Sarah Halzack, American Ballet Theatre puts on enchanting ‘Dream,’ but ‘Sylphides’ is lacking (Washington Post, April 17)

The most substantial work of the evening was The Dream, an adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream), by Frederick Ashton, whose sentimental Les Patineurs charmed me last summer. Premiered in 1964, The Dream streamlines the play, drawing on only the central stories of the fairies and the four lovers. Ashton used Mendelssohn's charming incidental music, commissioned by King Frederick William IV of Prussia, when Mendelssohn was music director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Mendelssohn included and adapted his own brilliant overture for the work, composed by itself in 1826, when the composer was only 17. Ashton's choreography puts the pairing of Oberon and Titania at the center, danced here by the elegant couple of Julie Kent and especially Marcelo Gomes, who was a menacing King of Shadows, making for a gorgeous pas de deux. Herman Cornejo made a capricious, satyr-like Puck, in his acrobatic leaps and pointed legs, and Alexei Agoudine an oafish, faux-delicate Bottom, who often tiptoes around when he is delighted. Ashton makes the four lovers into broadly comic, mostly pantomime roles, providing plenty of laughs. Mendelssohn composed several charming vocal numbers in this music, for soprano, mezzo-soprano, and women's chorus, sung here in English by Melissa Mino, Jennfier Cherest, and the Arlington Children's Chorus. The singing was diminished just slightly by being piped in by speaker from another room, and there was one early entrance from the choir in the final number, which was righted by conductor Ormsby Wilkins.

American Ballet Theater's production of Don Quixote opens tonight and continues through Sunday afternoon.

Murray Perahia Back at Strathmore

Charles T. Downey, Murray Perahia’s piano recital at Strathmore delivers on expectations and exceeds them (Washington Post, March 6, 2014)

Schumann, Papillons (inter alia), M. Perahia (CBS Masterworks, 1990)

One expects certain things from a recital by Murray Perahia: some carefully chiseled Bach, some Chopin or Schumann miniatures performed with a rubato so spontaneous that they sound as if they have just been improvised. The celebrated American pianist, now in the fifth decade of his career, delivered all of those things during his concert Tuesday night, presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society at Strathmore.

The fourth French Suite was classic Perahia Bach, with no need to make grandiose statements, just to let the music unfold: a blithe allemande, a tripping courante, a delicate sarabande, sprightly small dances with curlicue decorations, a brash gigue. Schumann’s “Papillons” was enlivened by tiny voicing details, like the brushstrokes and fine shading of a master painter, a series of whimsical thoughts rambled out like a Romantic stream of consciousness. [Continue reading]

Murray Perahia, piano
WPAS
Music Center at Strathmore

PREVIOUSLY:
2012 | 2009 | 2007 | Bach Partitas

Briefly Noted: Tharaud's Encores

Autograph (Encores), A. Tharaud (released on November 19, 2013)

Last week, I mentioned Alexandre Tharaud's special concert residency at the Cité de la Musique this week. The French pianist's new CD, Autograph, arrived in the mail recently, and the official release date is today. In most cases, such a recording of favorite encores is nothing more than the self-indulgence of a star musician. As usual, even under those circumstances, Tharaud delivers something that is instead thoughtful and mostly devoid of overly familiar chestnuts (a Rachmaninoff prelude, op. 3/2, and Chopin's Minute Waltz aside). There are a couple favorites from Tharaud's past, like Rameau's Les Sauvages, Couperin's Le Tic-Toc-Choc, and a Scarlatti sonata (K. 141): Tharaud has described the disc as a sort of self-portrait through the lens of his own discography. Many pieces, perhaps too many, are of the dreamy, sugary melodic variety -- Tchaikovsky's op. 19/4 nocturne, Fauré's Romance sans paroles, Sibelius's Valse triste, Satie's third Gymnopédie, Poulenc's Mélancolie, Mompou's El Lago -- but this sort of piece is so squarely in Tharaud's wheelhouse that it is hard to complain about their inclusion. The surprises are the best part -- the frantic celebration of Grieg's Wedding Day at Troldhaugen, the homesickness of Adios a Cuba by Ignacio Cervantes, the prancing dissonance of Oscar Strasnoy's Tourbillon -- and, of course, there is Tharaud's crisp and joyous Bach, which bookends the disc. The only thing one misses is hinted at in this radio interview (en français): Tharaud loves to improvise, which is another reason he thinks that having a piano in his apartment would put him at risk of doing nothing but playing for his own own amusement. A Tharaud improvisation would have been just the thing to give the final punch to this pleasing little disc.

Joel Fan @ Dumbarton Oaks

Charles T. Downey, Joel Fan, an often-eclectic American pianist, sticks to the romantics at Dumbarton Oaks (Washington Post, November 6, 2013)

Music of the Americas, J. Fan (2009)

Competitions launch many a musician’s career, but usually they do not define it for long. American pianist Joel Fan got his first breaks because of competitive victories, but he has made a career on a willingness to juxtapose traditional and unexpected repertory. In a recital at Dumbarton Oaks on Monday night, he offered a program of four romantic composers, first performed at the Ravinia Festival this summer.

It was a far cry from the eclectic programs Fan has played in the past few years at the National Gallery of Art. Wagner, for example, is not a name that leaps to mind when one thinks of a piano recital, but Fan opened with a transcription of the prelude to “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” made by Glenn Gould and rearranged by Fan for a single pianist. From it, one had the sense of the romantic striving beyond what an instrument or genre can give. [Continue reading]

Joel Fan, piano
Friends of Music
Dumbarton Oaks

SEE ALSO:
Joe Banno, Fan gives fantastic close to National Gallery's American Music Festival (Washington Post, December 3, 2009)

Charles T. Downey, Pianist Joel Fan performs at the National Gallery of Art (Washington Post, June 6, 2011)