In Memoriam: Listening to Alfred Brendel

Most people listening to classical music today have, to a greater or lesser degree, been musically socialized with the performances of Alfred Brendel. He was a fixed star on the international scene when it came to Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert and a few other of his favorite composers. His dry wit, usually gentle, rarely acerbic, poignancy, his unapologetic classicism made him an unlikely, charming icon. He has passed away on Tuesday, June 17^th, 2025 at his home in London.

I was on the steps outside the Musikverein when I read the news that Alfred Brendel had passed away in London, at the age of 94. This was the place he had given his final recital of his truly final farewell tour and this was the town where he lived when his career got under way in 1950 after first successes in Graz and before he permanently settled in the UK in 1971.

His success was a stellar one; born in the 1930s, Brendel was of a time that came a generation-plus after the keyboard titans à la Arthur Schnabel (1882), Wilhelm Backhaus (1884), Edwin Fischer (1886), Arthur Rubinstein (1887), Wilhelm Kempff (1895), Vladimir Horowitz, Rudolf Serkin and Claudio Arrau (all 1903). He was thus a “modern” artist, to anyone born before 1980, and, crucially, born into the stereo age. This is relevant, because as the exclusive go-to pianist of one of the major labels – Philips (now Decca) – for the heydays of the late analog and digital age, Brendel became a superstar of – and to some extent also because of – the recorded age. In the 100-volume, 200-CD “Great Pianists Of The 20th Century” project of Tom Deacon’s – to which Brendel was an advisor – Brendel is one of only seven pianists (Arrau, Gilels, Horowitz, Kempff, Richter & Rubinstein being the others) with three volumes dedicated to his art. If it had to be the classical repertoire – Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven – Brendel was there for you. Within that realm – and a little beyond – he recorded most of what there was to be recorded and much of that twice, some, like the Beethoven Sonatas, even thrice or more: In the 60s for Vox, in the 70s for Philips, analog, and for Philips again in the 90s, digitally. And of select works Brendel, who exerted quite a bit of control over what would get released and what would not, opted to have live accounts published, which he professedly preferred over his studio accounts. With the different releases of each of these versions (and most of them on Philips or Decca, still), it can get a bit messy trying to figure out which the analog second recording of D.960 or the digital remake of the Moonlight Sonata is or isn't. (But I am here to help.)

Alfred Brendel on Ionarts: In Performance His Soft Touch, Powerfully Moving, 02/09/2006 (jfl) Closing the Lid: Alfred Brendel, 19/03/2008 (Charles) A Conversation with Alfred Brendel, 20/03/2008 (Michael Lodico) Alfred Brendel Speaks, 11/18/2000 (Charles) On Record: Best Recordings of 2004 (#8), 12/16/2004 (jfl) From Goerne to His Distant Beloved, 07/18/2005 (jfl) Brendel and Mozart, 02/06/2006 (Charles) Brendel’s Choice, 02/06/2006 (jfl) Best Recordings of 2009 (#3), 12/14/2009 (jfl)

In Austria, his success shadowed that of fellow pianists Paul Badura-Skoda (1927), who, to some degree, escaped into the historical performance niche, Jörg Demus (1928), who found his main fame in Lied accompaniment, Ingrid Haebler (1929), who recorded much the same repertoire but whose star waned earlier, and Friedrich Gulda (1930), who became the eccentric: Considered by people in the know as a superior pianist but with a far smaller reach, ultimately. Internationally – specifically in America – there were contemporaries Byron Janis (1928), Glenn Gould (1932), Van Cliburn (1934), Leon Fleisher (1928), Richard Goode (1943), most of whom had their careers cut prematurely short; elsewhere, pianists like Ivan Moravec (1930) were stuck behind the iron curtain. As a result, the name “Alfred Brendel” and the maroon bar of the Philips label’s recordings became as indicative of a musically interested household as Wilhelm Kempff on the Yellow Label had been, a few decades earlier. Brendel’s association with the “Complete Mozart Edition” only furthered this omnipresence.

This kind of prominence brought about the invariable backlash in the form of criticism – the thrust of which, generally, was that Brendel was boring. This accusation might have had its understandable roots in Brendel’s style, which relied on subtlety and wit, level-headedness and sincerity, articulation, intelligence, and purpose, but never flash. The grand romantic gesture, even if it had been within his reach, was not temperamentally his. Even Liszt (where he did show the kind of chops that some critics might occasionally have forgotten he had) was not showy with Brendel.

It also showed in the repertoire he chose to play and even more so the repertoire he chose not to play. He left out composers most pianists couldn’t envisage making a career without: Chopin was (largely) missing; hardly, if any, Debussy or Ravel; no Rachmaninoff was ever in his sights, nor Tchaikovsky. Instead, he dropped morsels of

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Briefly Noted: Igor Levit drinks the philtre

Wagner, Act I Prelude from Tristan und Isolde (Henze, Liszt, Mahler), Igor Levit (released on September 9, 2022) Sony Classical 886449503582 | 1h41

The Russian-German pianist Igor Levit is on a Tristan und Isolde kick. His new two-disc set, titled Tristan, pairs Hans Werner Henze's ground-breaking Tristan, from 1974, with the Wagner work that inspired it, especially the notorious Act I prelude, transcribed by Zoltán Kocsis. The Henze is an elusive, unclassifiable work, combining piano solo, electronic tapes, and orchestra. This thoughtful rendition, recorded in November 2019, features the Leipzig Gewandhaus under Franz Welser-Möst. An authoritative booklet essay by Anselm Cybinski lays out the work's many other musical quotations and allusions (Brahms, Mahler, and Chopin among them) as well as the multiple layers of meaning encoded in it.

Levit surrounds this enigmatic modern piece with romantic works he sees as related. From Liszt he takes the A-flat major nocturne known as Liebesträum No. 3, derived from a song set to poetry by Ferdinand Freiligrath. The poem, quoted and translated in the booklet, is the antidote to the love-death of Wagner's opera, a plea for lovers to remain alive, and therefore love, as long as they may. The disc concludes with "Harmonies du Soir," the eleventh piece from the same composer's Études d'exécution transcendante, an evocation of the night in which Wagner's lovers try to hide their passion.

This "program of Tristanesque works," as Cybinski puts it, includes Ronald Stevenson's piano arrangement of the first movement (Adagio) of Mahler's Tenth Symphony. One could see this selection as representing the point of view of King Marke on the Tristan story, as Mahler wrote it in the period after he learned of the affair between his wife, Alma, and Walter Gropius. Stretched out to over 27 minutes, this version grows organically from its opening (given to the violas in the orchestral score), that has considerable resonance with the main motif of Wagner's Act I prelude.

Levit returned to Washington this week, for the first appearance since his striking local recital debut in 2017, presented again by Washington Performing Arts. Thursday's excellent concert, in addition to exquisite Schumann and a new piece commissioned from jazz pianist Fred Hersch, added one last Tristan nugget to this program. On the second half, Levit played the Kocsis transcription of the Act I prelude from this recording, following it with a Faustian interpretation of Liszt's vast B minor sonata.

The juxtaposition made me realize, for the first time, that the final measure of Wagner's prelude is identical to the first measure of the Liszt sonata: two short staccato strikes on G in 6/8 meter. Wagner ends up on G without really giving the listener much reason to think of that as the keynote of the prelude, and Liszt immediately obscures the note with the descending scalar pattern that opens the sonata. To draw attention to this conjunction, Levit elided the two pieces, not only eschewing any pause between them, but making Wagner's last two notes simultaneously Liszt's first two.

Alain Altinoglu in Rubbish Liszt and Crusading Prokofiev

Vienna, February 26, 2019; Musikverein—Liszt’s tone poem From the Cradle to the Grave is bound be one of those works that we will spasmodically “rediscover”, revive, hype, and – briefly – praise before forgetting again… because it really isn’t all that great. (Also see point 8 of David Hurwitz' “Classical Music’s Ten Dirtiest Secrets”.) It fails to deliver on what it sets out to do: It does *not* tell a story. It merely delivers episodes. That generic life that Liszt describes has little obvious development to it, nor even a particularly convincing end. Cradle to Grave (like the Faust Symphony) also lies awkwardly for the strings, which creates a unique, dark sound that does not project well – a color that does, however, befit the low woodwinds.

COMPOSER, WORK PERFORMERS LABEL

Not entirely surprisingly, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra performed this tone poem for the first time in its 100-year history in a series of three concerts last February at the Musikverein… and I wouldn’t be surprised if it were another 100 years before it was performed again. Maybe Alain Altinoglu ‘lost the long line’—that canard of a complaint where you never know whether listener or performer deserves the lion’s share of the blame—but he couldn’t have blamed much: Only a magician could have kept the audience from losing track and Altinoglu is not a magician. It’s no fun to blame the composer for a performance that fails to spark because often it’s routine playing, lack of comprehension or articulation or a mix thereof that is at work. Here it might just have merit. All the same, one ought to be thankful for these periodic revivals. It’s still better than routine and same-old-same-old. Aside, every so often, a gem is among them, and the rest of the time it’s good to dismiss something on experience, not hearsay.

This concert’s de-facto overture made programming sense in light of the Liszt Piano Concerto No.2 that was put on for Denis Matsuev to fill the obligatory romantic-concerto slot of the concert with: A showman for a show concerto, plushly pushing the notes through their course; high-end luxury monochrome plodding through the work’s single movement. Happily, the fan-club was in place, setting off a ferociously banged Hall of the Mountain King transcription encore.

Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky to the rescue in the second half! A half that felt as if surgically decoupled from the first. Not that some of the ills the plague the classical music scene didn’t also rear their heads here. To assure the money stays in the family, Altinoglu had his wife—Nora Gubisch—hired to perform the short solo mezzo part of the piece. The saving grace on this act of common nepotism was that she is easy on the ears and did well, with a hollow-low, sepia-toned atmospheric voice. But the look is never, never good. Nevsky is a rousing work with a fun parody of Orff for the crusading Teutons and lots of musical rah-rah-ing. That the audience got loudness in lieu of raw energy was never really a detraction; the winds only slightly off in the trickiest passages. The Singverein aided and abetted the orchestra with rousing Russian and only very occasional missed cues.

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News: Alain Altinoglu (1975) has just been named the new Chief Conductor of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra (hr-Sinfonieorchester, in German). He will begin he tenure starting with the 21/20 season. He will succeed Andrés Orozco-Estrada who is in turn coming to the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.

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Briefly Noted: Piemontesi's Colorful Liszt

Liszt, Années de pèlerinage, 2ème Année ("Italie") / Légende No. 1 , F. Piemontesi (released on May 24, 2019) Orfeo C982191 | 62'19" 1ère Année (2018)

It was a pleasure to discover Francesco Piemontesi earlier this year when he made his debut with the National Symphony Orchestra. Far more impressive than his take on a Rachmaninoff blockbuster was his encore, a sensitively voiced rendition of the slow movement of Bach’s Italian Concerto. That experience led me to push the Swiss-Italian pianist's recordings toward the top of my listening rotation. His most recent release, the second year of Liszt's Années de pèlerinage, gives a varied and delightful cast to the composer's memories of his years in Italy.

Rather than Venezia e Napoli, the supplement Liszt later added to the second volume of his collection, Piemontesi prefaces it with the first of the Deux Légendes, pieces dedicated to miracles associated with Liszt's two name saints. This turns out to be the highlight of the disc, with pastel-light avian trills twittering around the unison lines of St. Francis of Assisi preaching to the birds.

More than the technical exploits of the Petrarch Sonnets and the dizzying excesses of "Après une lecture du Dante, fantasia quasi sonata," it is these more musical moments that stand out. In the dreamy "Sposalizio," inspired by Raphael's Marriage of the Virgin in Milan, tinkling motifs rain down in the seraphic postlude. In the dirge-like "Penseroso," inspired by the moody sculpture of Michelangelo for the tomb of Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici in the "new sacristy" of the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, Liszt explores the somber bass end of the keyboard. The latter artwork made quite an impression on Liszt, as he published the music with a quatrain of Michelangelo's he felt applied to the sculptor's portrait of Lorenzo: "I am thankful to sleep, and more thankful to be made of stone. So long as injustice and shame remain on earth, I count it a blessing not to see or feel; so do not wake me – speak softly!"

On ClassicsToday: Splendid Flotsam From Till Fellner

Fellner In Concert: Splendid Liszt, Less Impressive Beethoven

by Jens F. Laurson

If you favor pianism over star-power, Austrian Till Fellner should be right up your alley. Although the one-time Alfred Brendel-protégée is generally well regarded among connoisseurs, he strikes as perennially underrated. At his worst, Fellner’s style can appear straightforward, neat, and well behaved, making extremes... Continue Reading

Lawrence Brownlee, classical voice

Donizetti & Bellini: Allegro io son, L. Brownlee, Kaunas City Symphony, Kaunas State Choir, C. Orbelian (2016)

The Kennedy Center is skewing toward more popular forms of entertainment. It has turned out to be the hallmark of the tenure of the organization's new president, Deborah Rutter. In a formula familiar from many concert presenters, Renée Fleming has been called in to offer some star advice, for a set of concerts unimaginatively called "Renée Fleming VOICES." (Capital letters make it different!) The new series kicked off with its sole classical performance, by tenor Lawrence Brownlee. The rest of the season features jazz, musical theater, and cabaret.

It always takes my ears a few moments to adjust to the active vibrato in Brownlee's voice. Not unpleasant in any way, it is a prominent flutter, tightly coiled, but after some time passes my ear adjusts to it and can still perceive the center of the pitch. True to form Brownlee's strongest work came in arias from bel canto operas. Brownlee hit the first big high notes of the evening in "Seul sur la terre," from Donizetti's Dom Sébastien, Roi de Portugal. That vibrato, among other advantages, gives a high-energy buzz to Brownlee's notes off the top of the staff, which do not sound floated, in the sense that there is intensity and effort in them. This was more apparent in the even higher notes in "Terra amica," from Rossini's Zelmira, which was truly thrilling as Brownlee showed off the virtuosity of his runs and top notes. A close second was the closing set of spirituals, in classic arrangements by H. T. Burleigh.

A set of Strauss songs was more successful than seemed likely given Brownlee's strengths. The German diction was not always clear but especially in subtle songs like "Breit' über mein Haupt" he brought the same silky clarity and gentle phrasing that make his bel canto singing so pretty. With "Morgen" and "Die Nacht" pianist Justina Lee, for much of the evening merely a competent accompanist, was integral to the beauty of the performance. Finally with "Cäcilie," both artists cranked up the excitement for the song's dramatic climax, which was thrilling. An opening set of Liszt songs, some of which were heard more beautifully from Angela Meade in August, impressed less. With all due respect to i nostri amici italiani, if I never hear a set of these Italian art songs again for a decade, that would be fine by me. All was forgiven, however, by the choice of encore, a plangent rendition of Donizetti's Una furtiva lagrima.

The best news of the evening is that the Kennedy Center has fixed the buzzing sound that plagued concerts in the Family Theater earlier in the fall. The sound, something like a vibrating light fixture, was absent on Tuesday evening, although there was still just a whisper of unwelcome noise, perhaps from the ventilation system.

Lawrence Brownlee stars in Washington National Opera's upcoming production of Donizetti's La Fille du Régiment (November 12 to 20, but in only five of the eight performances), in the Kennedy Center Opera House.

Briefly Noted: Grimaud's 'Water'

Water, H. Grimaud (released on January 29, 2016) DG 0289 4793426-4 | 57'03"

Hélène Grimaud was last in Washington in 2008, to play Beethoven's fourth piano concerto with the National Symphony Orchestra. This recent release is partially a live recital program on the theme of water in music, which she played in several places, captured here at the Park Avenue Armory in New York in 2014. In between these tracks -- by Berio, Takemitsu, Fauré, Albéniz, Ravel, Liszt, Janáček, and Debussy -- are ethereal "transition" pieces, recorded last summer by Nitin Sawhney. In these brief, mostly electronic pieces, Sawhney creates soundscapes on keyboard, guitar, and computer, including some pre-recorded sounds of water.

The live version of this recital, reviewed in the New York Times, sounds much more interesting than the result on disc. A collaboration with artist Douglas Gordon and lighting designer Brian Scott, the concert was staged in a pool that slowly filled with water over the course of 20 minutes: "Then, the lights darkened until the hall was almost completely dark. You heard the subdued sloshing of someone walking on the flooded space: Ms. Grimaud, of course." Some of the repertoire choices are perhaps too obvious (Ravel's Jeux d'eau, Liszt's Les jeux d'eau a la Villa d'Este, Debussy's La Cathédrale Engloutie), making Grimaud's renditions of Takemitsu's Rain Tree Sketch II and Berio's Wasserklavier stand out from the crowd. A Fauré barcarolle and Janáček's In the Mists seem like stretches thematically, especially when there are choices like Ravel's Ondine, Scriabin's second sonata, and Debussy's Poissons d'Or. That last one was reportedly Grimaud's encore at some performances.

NSO Back from Europe

Liszt, Piano Concertos, J.-Y. Thibaudet, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, C. Dutoit (Decca, 1992)

The National Symphony Orchestra is back from a grueling European tour last month, although they may not have recovered yet. The group actually played its first post-tour program last week, but this week's program is the first to reach my ears since the ensemble's return. Heard last night in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, Christoph Eschenbach conducted a truly puzzling program that opened with the world premiere of Tobias Picker's Opera without Words, commissioned by the NSO and given its world premiere at this performance.

I have not had the chance to hear much of Picker's music live, but I think of Picker more as an opera composer. This work, ostensibly a concerto for orchestra, did not do much to advance him in my estimation as an orchestral composer. One goes into such a piece expecting innovative orchestration, surprising uses of the instruments, and a range of styles and textures. In most of these expectations, it disappointed. There were solos for the string instruments, none all that remarkable, an extended one for the trombone; in the second movement, along with an odd bit for solo horn, there was a baffling passage for a single melodic line on the piano; the percussion was perhaps overly present, but aside from some lush moments in the fifth and final movement, little stood out in terms of orchestral color or form.

Pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet gave a generally fine performance of the solo part in Liszt's second piano concerto. The orchestra did not seem quite on the same intonation page with the piano at the opening of the piece, with its interwoven woodwind solos, but Thibaudet took all the work's flowing runs and thundering octaves in stride, with a few minor exceptions. The work feels like such a hodgepodge: hints of a Tchaikovsky ballet score in the first big orchestral interlude; harmonic and melodic turns that nuzzle up to the edge of jazzy Gershwin; a devilish scherzo that morphs into a pompous march; an elfin dance finale. In the second movement, we suddenly wake up and find ourselves in a cello sonata for a short time, which was a particularly lovely moment in this performance.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Picker premiere leads NSO’s packed program (Washington Post, March 11)

It has been a very Brahms year so far, with recent reviews of the composer's fourth symphony, first symphony, and German Requiem. Christoph Eschenbach's way with the first symphony did not give me much hope that his interpretation of the third symphony would be my cup of tea. Indeed, right from the opening bars, with an affected swell of a crescendo, it seemed overblown. The orchestra, following his lead, blasted (brass) and oozed (strings) their way through this most charming of symphonies, a piece easily marred by most kinds of excess. Much of the first movement felt rushed, leading to clipped endings of phrases, and parts of it were mannered, with sudden changes in tempo or dynamic that did not seem justified. The second movement was schmaltzy and overly slow, and the third movement, with its ardent opening cello melody, was overdone by stretching and overplaying, although the return of that main melody, now in the horn, was gorgeous. More distortions of tempo filled the finale, on top of which three of the composer's Hungarian Dances was just overkill.

This concert repeats on Saturday night only.

Forbes Classical CD of the Week

Later today: #Classical_CD_of_the_Week https://t.co/95eEThhG4w #Liszt #CDReview

Later to… https://t.co/jJggMsSq1Q pic.twitter.com/Ozy9DHb2io

— Jens F. Laurson (@ClassicalCritic) March 2, 2016

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Ionarts Exclusive: Leah Crocetto in Recital

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

Leah Crocetto (photo by Fay Fox)

Leah Crocetto made an excellent debut at Washington National Opera last season, in the company's first production of Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites. The company brought back the American soprano, who hails from the town of Adrian, Michigan, for a recital in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater on Friday night. Before it began, WNO artistic director Francesca Zambello hinted that Crocetto will return to the company next season, in an opera by a composer whose name begins with a letter near the end of the alphabet. Judging by Crocetto's recent engagements, that letter is likely to be V for Verdi, but judging by this evening's successful repertoire, one could also wish it were S for Strauss.

The top of Crocetto's voice is exceptionally strong, able to level the room with the ff high A in Zueignung (op. 10/1) but also able to float angelically on the pp high G in Die Nacht (op. 10/3) with a transparent, sighing clarity. The middle range is the only undeveloped part of the tessitura, but the thrilling swell of sound in Cäcilie, supported with orchestral fullness by pianist Mark Markham, more than made up for that. Somehow Markham has not appeared in these pages before, but he has a remarkably beautiful touch at the piano: this was the first performance of Strauss's Morgen I have ever heard where one wished the singer would not come in, just to keep listening to the pianist.

Markham upstaged his singer in some of the songs of Duparc and Liszt as well, but Crocetto's silken high notes and purring legato gave an apt languor to songs like Extase and Soupir in the French set. She went for urgency more than finesse in L'invitation au voyage, a mood that carried into Liszt's Tre sonetti di Petrarca, especially the miniature opera scene of the first of these songs, Pace non trovo. This was where she finally opened up to notes higher than A, taking the optional high D-flat toward the end, while Markham had a few tiny slips in the more challenging piano part. The only opera aria on the program was a strong Ain't it a pretty night? from Carlisle Floyd's Susannah, which introduced a more contemporary and American second half.

Crocetto also performed Eternal Recurrence, a new song cycle composed for her by Gregory Peebles, formerly a singer with Chanticleer. Peebles is obviously a big fan of Crocetto's voice, judging from the whooping and hollering he made for her in the audience, and the writing put her in the best light. There were jazzy overtones and pop gestures, a nod perhaps to Crocetto's earlier work singing in cabarets and bars, but there were dissonant colors as well, and a mesmerizing overtone effect, as Crocetto's high note made the sympathetic strings of the piano resonate in echo. Crocetto has described the piece as about an artist's life and having great personal significance for her, but the texts, not credited to any source, remained mostly mysterious. She concluded with a set of torch songs, extended by two encores of the same ilk.

Beauty Over Power: Herbert Schuch at the Kennedy Center

We welcome this review from Ionarts guest contributor Seth Arenstein.

Invocation (Bach, Liszt, Ravel, Messiaen, Murail), H. Schuch (Naïve, 2014)

Washington Performing Arts President and CEO Jenny Bilfield rang in the 49th season of the Hayes Piano Series with a Saturday afternoon recital at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater centered on musical evocations of bells. While compositions from Liszt, Ravel, Messiaen, and Murail provided bell-like sounds, as did Busoni and Bauer arrangements for piano of J.S. Bach vocal works, it was the young pianist Herbert Schuch whose sensitive touch and gorgeously subdued playing rang out this day. Yet Schuch’s playing was anything but loud. During this recital, the Romanian-born Schuch brought forth subtle colors from the piano, without the quicksilver technique and sheer power that seem to be hallmarks of many of today’s most popular young pianists.

From the opening of the program, Tristan Murail’s Cloches d’adieu, et un sourire, Murail's homage to his teacher, Olivier Messiaen, Schuch began building a quiet, mesmerizing line of music that lasted nearly one hour, through two more works: selections from Liszt’s Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, S. 173, and Ferruccio Busoni’s arrangement of Bach’s chorale prelude Ich ruf’ zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 639. The subtle wave lasted in part because Schuch played with barely a pause between the compositions, never leaving the piano bench.

By failing to announce that the works were to be performed en masse, Schuch and WPA took a risk that the Hayes audience would appreciate this uncommon practice and be able to follow along. While some audience members undoubtedly were puzzled, weaving the pieces together worked beautifully in an artistic sense. Schuch’s lyricism, displayed best during the Liszt, and his gorgeous control created a continuous, compelling tension until the Bach-Busoni’s final notes brought the first half to an end. It was as if Schuch had created a single, soft musical statement, despite playing pieces from various historical periods.

Other Reviews: Robert Battey, Herbert Schuch is a good pianist, but he inspires more questions than answers (Washington Post, October 19)

The second half was only slightly different. Again, Schuch performed his selections without a break, and the vast majority of his playing rarely rose above mezzo-piano. There was a moment of great contrast, however, as the dramatic Funerailles selection from Liszt’s Harmonies poétiques et religieuses began with loud, clanging bells and later depicted a battle, with trumpet calls and horses’ hooves pounding. Schuch had little trouble transitioning from an afternoon of subtle, pianissimo playing, sitting calmly erect on the piano bench, to moments in the Liszt, where he hunched over the keyboard to produce fortissimo chords. He did so with power and executed several fast glissandi runs with impressive accuracy.

Shortly after that, though, Schuch returned to the contemplative, soft playing that dominated the recital. He concluded with La vallée des cloches, a selection from Ravel’s Miroirs. A tone painting written on three staves, it depicts a variety of ringing bells, from heavy Parisian church bells to sweet, hand-held bells. At one point Schuch crossed his left hand over his right, to flick two small bells.

The piano recitals continue later this month, when Washington Performing Arts presents András Schiff (October 26) and Evgeny Kissin (October 28).

'Fearsome songs of ancient Chaos': Hamelin in College Park

N. Medtner, Complete Piano Sonatas / Forgotten Melodies, M.-A. Hamelin (Hyperion, 1998) Debussy, Images / Préludes (Book 2), M.-A. Hamelin (Hyperion, 2014) R. Rimm, The Composer-Pianists: Hamelin and the Eight (Amadeus Press, 2003)

A recital by Marc-André Hamelin may leave you breathless. The technical achievement, to be sure, will be awe-inspiring, but few other pianists can so easily convince a listener of the merits of music they likely do not know well, if at all. Washington has been blessed with a large number of recitals from Hamelin in the last few years, the latest of which was at the Clarice Smith Center on Sunday afternoon, to kick off the 50th anniversary celebrations for the International Piano Archives at the University of Maryland. In a post-intermission chat with IPAM's curator, Donald Manildi, Hamelin reminisced about his father's contact with the Archives in its first decade, as well as his own research association with the institution over the years.

The first half of this excellent recital was focused on Russian obscurities, beginning with two of Samuil Feinberg's short piano sonatas from the World War I years. Feinberg was one of the eight composer-pianists covered in Robert Rimm's book on the subject, a tradition in which Rimm included Hamelin, who plays his own inimitable pieces from time to time. Three of those composers (Rachmaninov, Medtner, and Scriabin), Feinberg once said (as quoted by Rimm), "were wonderful composers who came to their pianism through their own composition." One senses the same mechanism at work in Feinberg's music -- and in Hamelin as well -- in the meandering, longing melody of the second sonata (A minor, op. 2) buried almost beyond recognition in tangles of figuration, for example, or the extravagant harmonic vagaries of the first sonata (A major, op. 1). Hamelin voiced the melody of the second sonata with great care, making a right-hand raindrop-like motif shower over it.

These shorter works were paired with the mammoth second sonata of Nikolai Medtner (E minor, op. 25), a piece Hamelin also played at his Kennedy Center recital in 2013. Subtitled "Night Wind" after the poem of that title by Fyodor Tyutchev, it is a work of fearsome pianistic challenges, realized tempestuously in often thunderous cacophony by Hamelin, but it seduces because of the driven sense of melody and form. The piece never wanders, as Feinberg seems to do at times, at least not in Hamelin's hands.

Hamelin also played Book 1 of Debussy's Images again, and the interpretation was better than how I remembered it in his 2013 recital at Shriver Hall. Here the second movement (Hommage à Rameau) had much more rubato than I recalled and yet a greater delicacy, while the first movement (Reflets dans l'eau) still startled with its aquatic transparency, and the third (Mouvement) had an ultra-fast but still finely etched quality.

Other Reviews: Patrick Rucker, A performance to restore the virtue of ‘virtuoso’ (Washington Post, October 6)

Sheer virtuoso display came out in the last piece, Liszt's Venezia e Napoli, from the Italian year of Années de pèlerinage. Hamelin took the barcarolle of the first movement (Gondoliera) at a leisurely tempo, tickling the ear with the many lacy figurations and trills of the right hand. Somehow the insistent tremolos of the second movement, at times almost like a furiously strummed mandolin accompanying the song -- an aria from Rossini's Otello -- managed not to sound hokey, and the Tarantella of the third movement provided the necessary ignition to fuel a bacchanal of encores. (Another outrageous Liszt concert paraphrase, Réminiscences de Norma, served the same purpose in Hamelin's 2011 recital at Strathmore.)

In response to enthusiastic ovations, Hamelin generously offered four encores, beginning with the first of Earl Wild's Seven Virtuoso Études on Popular Songs, based on George Gershwin's song Liza (All the Clouds'll Roll Away). This was followed by Liszt's arrangement of Chopin's song My Joys, Godowsky's mind-blowing transcription of Chopin's Revolutionary Etude for the left hand alone (!), and The Punch and Judy Show, a madcap miniature by Eugène Goossens (embedded below).

The next recital in the series honoring IPAM will feature Orion Weiss (December 3), at the Clarice Smith Center in College Park.

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.

Matthew Polenzani Brightens My Day

Liszt, Songs, Vol. 1, M. Polenzani, J. Drake (Hyperion, 2010)

Charles T. Downey, Polenzani’s singing and Drake’s piano playing create engaging performance (Washington Post, January 16, 2015)

At the end of a bad day, the combination of music and poetry in a well-executed song recital can lift one’s spirits like few other experiences.

The performance by Matthew Polenzani, presented on Wednesday night in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater by Vocal Arts DC, was one such event. The American tenor, most familiar from his many appearances with the Metropolitan Opera, may not have the most innately beautiful voice, but his striking program with English pianist Julius Drake tickled both mind and ear... [Continue reading]

Matthew Polenzani (tenor) and Julius Drake (piano)
Vocal Arts D.C.
Music by Beethoven, Liszt, Ravel, Satie, and Barber
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

Czech Philharmonic Comes to Fairfax

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from the GMU Center for the Arts.

Dvořák, Complete Symphonies and Concertos, Czech Philharmonic, J. Bělohlávek (Decca, 2014)

At the George Mason University Center for the Arts on Friday evening, November 14, 2014, the Czech Philharmonic, under conductor Jiří Bělohlávek, offered an almost all-Czech program of music during the Washington-area leg of its American tour. The first half of the evening consisted of Leos Janáček’s rhapsody Taras Bulba and Franz Liszt’s second piano concerto (A Major, S. 125), with French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet as soloist. The second half was taken up with Antonin Dvořák’s ninth symphony (E minor, op. 95, B. 178, "From the New World").

This orchestra has been my gold standard in Czech music for many years. I think the last time I heard them live was in a volcanic performance of Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass back in the 1980s in Carnegie Hall. My very favorite recordings of Janáček and Martinů remain those of the Czech Philharmonic, under the late, great conductor Karel Ančerl. I wondered how well served my memories would be by the current iteration of this orchestra, under a conductor who brought with him great expectations, having just been awarded this year’s Antonín Dvořák Prize (and last heard here with the Prague Philharmonia in 2012).

The answer is well served, indeed. From the beginning of the Janáček, it was clear that Bělohlávek deserves his fine reputation in the Czech repertory, particularly with the works of Smetana, Dvořák, Janáček, Suk, and Martinů. He and the Czech Philharmonic are native to the wildness of Janáček’s eccentric music, its orchestral brilliance, and its use of punchy motifs and dramatic abbreviation. Together, they brought Taras Bulba vividly to life, with all its wild swagger, clashing swords, pounding hooves, swirling dances, and poignant melodies. The piece was pulsing with life, with finely articulated playing from the winds and brass, and a very strong, surging string section. An early entry of the chimes seemed to stick out a little too far from the orchestral fabric, but that could be due to the acoustics of the room. In any case, every instrument is answering every other instrument in this vital portrayal of its subject matter, and these forces caught the urgent sense of communication.

I confess that Franz Liszt is not one of my favorite composers, except for his magnificent oratorio Christus. In any case, it was a great pleasure to hear Thibaudet’s superb pianism in the second concerto. I could not imagine a more limpid touch in the opening Adagio or a stronger forte in the soon-to-follow Allegro. The work itself has a wild, almost improvisatory character that, to me, verges on hodgepodge. It certainly contains a lot of ear candy and has dazzling moments in the mercurial flow of marches, dances, and whatever else Liszt chooses to throw in. Because of the quality of playing by both the orchestra and soloist, this display piece made for an enjoyable romp.

Other Articles: James R. Oestreich, Regardless of Offstage Worries, Onstage It’s All Artistry (New York Times, November 17) Eric C. Simpson, Home dishes prove ideal menu for Czech Philharmonic (New York Classical Review, November 17) Tom Huizenga, Played by Czech Philharmonic, 1890s Dvorak sounds fresh as ever (Washington Post, November 17) Zachary Woolfe, A Maestro Returns, First There, Now Here (New York Times, November 14)

I admit that it was the Janáček that I principally came to hear. I am not sure I would have struggled out on a cold night to listen to another performance of the hugely popular Dvořák ninth. However, the Czech Philharmonic played with such warmth, power, and precision that my reservations at hearing this piece again were soon swept away.

The reaction of the audience was so enthusiastic that Bělohlávek offered two encores -- a scintillating rendition of Smetana’s overture to The Bartered Bride, and then a sweet Valse Triste by Oskar Nedbal (1874–1930), a Dvořák student, who later became conductor of the Czech Philharmonic. Bělohlávek conducted effectively with an economy of motion -- no histrionics for him. Whatever he is feeling he lets the music express. He and his forces produced a wonderfully rich sound without sacrificing clarity.

Bělohlávek and the Czech Philharmonic will perform Smetana’s Vltava, a symphonic poem from Ma Vlast, and Dvořák’s ninth symphony this evening at Washington National Cathedral (November 17, 7 pm) in celebration of the 25th Anniversary of the Velvet Revolution and the legacy of Václav Havel.

Sumi Hwang Incandescent at Phillips

Queen Elisabeth Competition: Voice 2014, S. Hwang (inter alii) (MP3, 2014)

Charles T. Downey, Soprano Sumi Hwang soars at the Phillips Collection
Washington Post, November 4, 2014

In 2012, Sumi Hwang won second prize at the ARD Music Competition in Munich, followed this year by the Grand Prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. The Korean soprano showed why at her American debut recital, a knockout hour-long program presented on Sunday afternoon at the Phillips Collection.

Hwang’s lyric soprano voice has a pearly clarity, the intonation just, and the tone even and pretty across its range. She had a pleasing simplicity in a set of three songs from Schumann’s “Myrthen,” Op. 25, giving a sense of excitement to... [Continue reading]

Sumi Hwang, soprano
Jonas Vitaud, piano
Phillips Collection

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

Steven Lin Goes to the Opera

Although Steven Lin did not end up winning the Kapell Competition two years ago, he made quite a splash with the audience. Washington Performing Arts brought the young Taiwanese-American pianist back to the area for a Hayes Piano Series recital on Saturday afternoon, in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. It revealed a musician with often astounding technique, searching for extremes of sound: sometimes he connected with the music, especially when there was a compelling narrative for him to tell, and sometimes he did not. (As for his rambling introductions to some of the pieces, at the edge of incoherence, some musicians -- frankly, most of them -- should just let the music speak for itself.)

The outer pieces on the program were both inspired by opera, in a way, a dramatic quality that brought out Lin's strengths as a storyteller. Beethoven's E-flat major piano sonata (op. 31, no. 3) offered Lin a game of buffo contrasts and gestures, as if the sequence of movements were scenes from a comic opera by Mozart or Haydn. Voicing gradations created a sense of solo versus tutti textures, with the plethora of wrong-note appoggiaturas played like pratfalls or laughter. The raucous second movement, a surprise scherzo, sounded like a crowd scene, with a chorus calling back and forth in a confused night setting, and the third movement, a minuet doubling as slow movement, like a sweet serenade at a window or a courtly dance, with a comic interlude for a trio. Here, with the repeat of the minuet, Lin lost steam and the performance turned a little dull, a situation that only worsened in the super-fast finale, played without much nuance and far too much bang.

Other Reviews: Simon Chin, Pianist Steven Lin sets bar high for Washington Performing Arts’ new season (Washington Post, September 29)

Liszt's Réminiscences de Don Juan was enough to prove Lin's technical bona fides, and the variations on Là ci darem la mano were daring and polished. The piece, I suspect, depicts Mozart's Don Giovanni after the opera's conclusion, taken off into hell where, according to Dante's conception, he reenacts his sins in eternity. This is why the music of the stone guest comes first; why the seducer's reminiscence of his seduction of Zerlina is accompanied by chromatic swirling music, as if depicting the foul whirlwind of the second circle of Inferno; and why it ends on the manic repetition of the Champagne Aria, Don Giovanni thumbing his nose at heaven from his punishment. Lin's mastery over the demands of Schumann's third sonata (F minor, op. 14) was no less impressive, but other than a general feeling of anxiety that pervaded the piece, it had no compelling tale to tell in Lin's hands. A new piece by David Hertzberg (b. 1990), notturno incantato, was a moderately interesting diversion, a static work of Lisztian tremolos and feathery right-hand ostinatos.

Iveta Apkalna @ KC

L'amour et la mort (Widor, Saint-Saëns, Bizet, Fauré), I. Apkalna (Oehms, 2011)

Charles T. Downey, Latvian organist shows pedal power at the Kennedy Center
Washington Post, May 23, 2014

This season the Kennedy Center instituted a concert series to put the new pipe organ in the Concert Hall, donated by the Rubenstein Family, through its paces. The last concert of the series fell to Latvian organist Iveta Apkalna, who played a varied and demanding program on Wednesday evening.

Old and new were paired on the first half, with three improvisation-like “Evocations” by Thierry Escaich, the organist at the church of St.-Etienne-du-Mont in Paris, interspersed with more traditional pieces by J. S. Bach. The tempestuous second “Evocation,” with its roiling ostinato C in octaves in the pedal, led nicely into Bach’s C minor passacaglia and fugue (BWV 582), in which the same note is the foundation of the bass pattern. Apkalna showed off her pedal feet more in ... [Continue reading]

Iveta Apkalna, organ
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

There was not space in the review to mention that, for an encore, Apkalna played the famous Toccata by Charles-Marie Widor, from the Organ Symphony No. 5 (F Minor, Op. 42, No. 1).

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• Paul Jacobs (February 7, 2014)
  
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Benjamin Grosvenor Returns

No one who heard Benjamin Grosvenor's Washington debut recital in 2012, on the heels of a fine debut recording with Decca, was likely to think of missing his second Washington Performing Arts appearance. An impending deluge could not keep me away from hearing this talented and intelligent British pianist again, on Tuesday night in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. On paper, the program was not exactly thrilling, a survey of different types of Romantic character pieces, either single works or gathered into sets, but as he played it, it offered many delights.

Mendelssohn's Rondo capriccioso in E major, op. 14, has an Andante introduction, in which Grosvenor picked out little motifs that decorated the melody. The Rondo section had a feathery lightness, clean in its detailed articulation even at a tripping tempo. When the melody went into his left hand, ingenious voicings differentiated the things swirling around it, and the bravura conclusion was big and bold. One does not hear Schumann's Humoreske, op. 20, live that often, probably because its fragmented, episodic nature makes it hard to pull off. Grosvenor set about giving flight to the many moods in the score: moony and wandering, playful, heroic, manic. At times the harshness of his fortissimo attack put the Terrace Theater instrument in an unflattering light, but the organic sense of rubato he gave the work, unraveling thick textures with many layers of voicing changes, helped give the music life. Along with an expert handling of the faster sections, Grosvenor gave the enigmatic passages just the sort of oddness Schumann likely had in mind. In between these two works was a single Schubert impromptu (G-flat major, op. 90, no. 3), a piece that is usually offered only as an encore or as part of the set. To stand on its own mid-program it would have to be extraordinary, which it was not -- very pretty, well played, with some unexpected details in the left hand, but no more.

The second half was frankly stronger than the first, focusing on music in late Romantic styles. Federico Mompou's Paisajes are three descriptive character pieces, short landscapes, and Grosvenor imbued them with translucent delicacy and pastel wisps of color, especially the purling waves of El Lago and the more dissonant Carros de Galicia. He showed the same kind of easy-going story-telling in two of Medtner's Fairy Tales, combining technical ease with a cantabile approach to the simpler passages. The repeated notes and forthright tone of the second one (op. 14/2, "March of the Paladins") were beautifully done, with each detail exceptionally clear.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor lives up to his reputation at Kennedy Center recital (Washington Post, May 1)

To go along with the first-rate rendition of Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit in 2012, there was a no less brilliant take on the same composer's Valses nobles et sentimentales, not reviewed live in these pages since the rather extraordinary Krystian Zimerman in 2006. Grosvenor had a broad, orchestral sense of scope in his approach, with a lilting sense of the dance, very tender in the slower pieces and an amiable, not rushed approach to the moderate tempi, with a smoky epilogue to top it off. A pre-encore of Liszt's outrageous arrangement of the Valse from the end of the second act of Gounod's Faust was an excellent take on what is often a very trashy transcription, with gossamer sounds in the frilly treble roulades and a mind-blowing trill section, like a ballet music box. This set up two rather astounding encores, just as a reminder that Grosvenor can play the showman: Rush Hour in Hong Kong by American composer Abram Chasins, whom he also chose for an encore in 2012, and the sixth of Ernő Dohnányi's Études de Concert, op. 28 (F minor, "Capriccio").