Tag: piano

Jian Liu (piano)
Concert, to support the purchase of the Steinway piano from the former TVNZ studios at Avalon: ‘Evocations – piano music in a vast space’

Byrd: Hughe Ashtons Grownde
Beethoven: Six Variations on a theme in F major, Op.34
Farquhar: Sonatina
Debussy: Images Book I (Reflections in the Water; Homage to Rameau; Movement)
Bach-Busoni: Chaconne

Wellington Cathedral of St. Paul

Friday, 14 November 2014, 6pm

Compared with the two earlier recitals in this series, this one attracted a small attendance only.  Perhaps it is getting too late in the year (i.e. close to Christmas) for people to come to a Friday early-evening recital.

It was appropriate to hear Byrd played in the Cathedral, although a little strange to hear it on the piano.  From My Ladye Nevells Booke that consisted of 42 pieces for keyboard, the Grownde would most likely have been played on the virginals at the time of its composition.

Liu played with minimum sustaining pedal; despite the resulting clarity, the resonance of the building added its lustre, which was perhaps not inappropriate for this piece.  It was full of charm and subtlety, of melody, harmony, rhythm and dynamics, all conveyed fluently giving a thoroughly delightful effect.  The piece’s passionless nuances meshed well with the calm atmosphere of the Cathedral, away from the noise and bustle of the city.

Beethoven was another matter.  The composer’s dynamics, and greater use of the pedal, could not help bringing into play the reverberation of the building – what one Wellington musician has called its ‘bathroom acoustics’.  Perhaps because of the small numbers of absorbent bodies present, I found the acoustic intruded more than at the previous two recitals in the series.

Jian Liu’s flexible finger-work and totally impeccable technique gave us splendid music, however, and the power and the passion of Beethoven were there, along with his astonishing inventiveness, in the Variations. The interpretation gave Beethoven his due, but the louder passages produced reverberation that perhaps even Beethoven in his deafness might have heard.  The Variations proceeded from the relatively simple to the utterly thrilling, while the gentle ending was soulful indeed.

It was good to hear music from noted New Zealand composer, the late David Farquhar.  However, it would have been useful to have had programme notes, as were provided for the first concert in the series, or at least tempi markings for the movements of the works performed (where relevant) as for the second concert.  The music began with a small cell of  notes close together – a great contrast to the expansiveness of Beethoven.  The music gradually built up, and strove for higher things.  This growth was beautifully handled.

The slow movement juxtaposes excitements for both hands alongside playful figures, becoming rhythmically intense.  The music then moved straight into a lively, even ecstatic ending.  Apart from this and the opening Byrd work, Liu played the programme without music scores.

The dreamy first movement of Debussy’s Images brought the pedal into use a great deal, but with the quieter dynamics of this work there was not undue resonance, and what there was simply added to the ambience of Debussy’s watery atmosphere of the first piece.  This music above all other in the series lived up to the title ‘Evocations – music in a vast space’.

The “Hommage  à Rameau” is a quintessential keyboard piece, reliant on impeccable technique as well as on fine interpretive skills – both of which Liu has in generous measure.  “Mouvement” features bells clanging in the right hand part while the left hand has deep rumblings supporting the growing cascade of notes that sometimes appeared to arrive from afar; at others, they were close and meaningful.

As an organist, I prefer my Bach unadulterated, but I can understand why composers are drawn to compose upon the many wonderful compositions of JSB.  Busoni was one such, and wrote his elaborations on the famous Chaconne from Partita no.2 for violin (BWV 1004). The violin work that was described by Yehudi Menuhin as “the greatest structure for solo violin that exists” can stand the treatment.  The dynamic contrasts certainly gave character, but brought out again the undue resonance in the building.  The variations built up to a level almost of ferocity.  Yet there was much variety of mood in addition to dynamics.  As time went on, I was becoming converted to Busoni’s work, not least because of Liu’s sensitive performance, bringing out as it did much beauty and nuance.

Liu is very much the versatile solo pianist, and he did the Steinway proud – and the composers whose music he played.

Wellington Cathedral of St.Paul presents:
EVOCATIONS – Piano Recital Series at the Cathedral

Diedre Irons (piano)

BEETHOVEN – Piano Sonata No.23 in F Minor Op.57 “Appassionata”
SCHUBERT – Moments Musicaux 1-6 D.780
CHOPIN – Ballade No.1 in G Minor, Op.23

Wellington Cathedral, Molesworth St., Wgtn

Friday 17th October, 2014

“Piano music in a vast space” read the heading on the programme sheet which we were given at the concert – and it certainly was that! In fact, I had wondered beforehand regarding the efficacy of performing a piano recital at all in such an environment, and certainly in respect of some of the repertoire – the “Appassionata?…..how on earth?….all those notes!……

As well, I remembered reading about some wag coming up to a young composer whose new work was being performed in some cavernous place like London’s Royal Albert Hall, clapping him on the back and saying, “Well done! – most new works these days are heard only once – but at least getting your work played in here means…..” To be honest, it was a bit like that in Wellington Cathedral for Diedre Irons’ masterly performance of one of Beethoven’s most titanic works – we were able to hear – and hear – and hear……

To a newcomer to Beethoven’s “Appassionata” Sonata, the experience of the recital in the Cathedral would have, in places, been enchanting, an awakening of hitherto unsuspected ghost-voices, perhaps those of the work’s interpreters down the years, come to the concert to add their particular tones to those of the “live” pianist’s activations. The work’s very opening had that same haunted acoustic quality, as did much of the slow movement’s theme and variations. In fact, by a process of gradation our ears attuned themselves to the gradually agglomerating sounds, coping with this state of things better than with the sudden and precipitate dynamic contrasts whose inherent violence was made thunderous in those reverberant spaces.

Quicker passages soon became jumbled on a superficial level, though even there, Beethoven’s direct harmonic style of writing meant that there was often a kind of cumulative harmonic effect set up, making for resplendent cadences! Nowhere was this more so than in the final pages of the work’s coda, where the F Minor harmonies cascaded towards us with the force of a dam breaking apart and flooding us with sound.

As for the performance, I was freshly riveted by Diedre Irons’ dark, brooding and big-boned approach to the music throughout the first movement. From the start she set out to use what seemed to be in theory an intractable acoustic to its best advantage – creating a halo of resonance around the misterioso-like opening, then evoking the thunder-gods from the cavernous spaces with black, implacable piano tones. One still noticed a wealth of detail from the gentler sequences, like patches of mountain flower between the imposing crags – details were not so much obscured by the reverberation as elongated and amplified, the result being a plethora of revisited tones and figurations, all contributing to what seemed like an ever-burgeoning effect.

It was a performance constantly awash with harmonies, oceanic rather than granite-like – in a sense it was a kind of reversal in effect of Liszt’s renowned piano transcriptions of the composer’s symphonies for solo piano, an amplification rather than a reduction. The pianist made the most of the richness of sound in the gentler major-key sequences, with gorgeously orchestral left-handed murmurings beneath the arpeggio-like melody. The lovely right-hand trills here sounded like rippling cascades, the playing unhesitatingly picturesque and pastoral-like, creating whole worlds in between the outbursts of fierce energy and dark purpose.

Just before the first movement’s coda, the pianist took her time with the emphatic, tumbling figurations, allowing the reference to the contemporaneous Fifth Symphony to clearly make its effect, before the concluding section exploded urgently and excitingly, but quickly running its course and returning to a kind of brooding, unsatisfied state of things. No time was wasted before the second movement began, the theme rich and alive, the tones not sculpted, but beautifully sung, the melody given all kinds of dynamic shadings and emphases. The “alternating chords” variation was nicely shaped, while the sweetness of the figurations of the following section became something so gratefully, almost sacramentally grasped at the end – heart-warming playing!

Only the final variation seemed to suffer from the reverberations, the playfulness apparent but the detail often lost in the swirl of tones – one had to listen first-time to the notes and not reflect on them, because the acoustic often got in first again with the echo-effect! At the climax everything properly “peaked”, and then was so easefully “knitted back” to the opening theme, the playing very Schubertian, I thought, in the way that the pianist made the bass theme “talk” with the treble – such a sense of inter-connectedness! After this, the finale was a molten whirl, though Diedre Irons’ incisive touch allowed plenty of thematic detail to get through, even if the middle voices tended to be swamped by the sound-torrents.

I liked the pianist’s reliance on strength and momentum rather than speed, the phrasings spaced out within the music’s pulsing, giving the notes plenty of space and emphasis, but keeping the focus taut, making for an incredible cumulative effect – understandably in the present context, the final repeat was not taken, the pianist instead resolutely driving the music towards the presto coda. Here it seemed the very elements were at work, the swirling figurations of the treble furiously sweeping up and down over the sonorous, clanging bell-like grandeur of the lower tones, strong and implacable. And what a release those final arpeggiated figures achieved here, the stuff of molten power and implacable presence.

Great programming, here, with the next piece! – I often think of Schubert as being a kind of foil to Beethoven, the former’s music seeming to say to the latter’s, “Yes, but you might also look at things this way…..”. Completely different to the “Appassionata” in scope and mood, Schubert’s work “Six Moment Musicaux” amply demonstrates an alternative way of treating and and presenting thematic material. Those bold, angular yodelling figures at the very beginning of the opening C Major piece are handled by their composer with a droll, occasionally quirky touch that largely maintains the music’s individual character – as opposed to Beethoven’s assiduous hammering-out and moulding of his themes. As for the performance, there could have been an entirely different pianist at work, here, in the Schubert – much of the opening was played by Diedre Irons in a spontaneous-sounding recitative-like manner, everything coloured and shaped by her playfulness and lightness of touch.

The piece’s “trio” section saw ease and grace kept to the fore, the “echoing” calls floated with utter nonchalance across what I’ve always previously thought of as crepuscular landscapes – here the playing seemed to suggest morning hues and gentle country sports, the various fanfare-like figurations far less laden and more contented in character. The Andantino worked beautifully, here, the ambience both supporting the pianist’s legato phrasing and enhancing her subtle weightings and colorings. And the Hungarian-like third-movement’s limpid, dance-like motions were enchanting, particularly the smile on the music’s face at the change to the major just before the end.

I did think the acoustic all but defeated the busy detailings in the Moderato which followed, though the piece’s middle section established its Janus-faced character strongly, particularly the furrowed-brow minor-key sequence. As for the stormy Allegro Vivace, Irons “went for it”, filling the Cathedral’s spaces with sound and fury with broad brush-strokes of agitated tones. Compensating for these tempestuous outbursts was the final Allegretto, a proper envoy-like piece, rather like “The Poet Speaks” in Schumann’s “Kinderscenen”, here most eloquently phrased and sounded, but also in places drawing parallels of figuration with Schubert’s great B-flat Sonata’s first movement.

This hour-long recital (all too brief a time!) was concluded with some Chopin, his Ballade No.1 in G Minor – fascinating to be able to experience the work almost cheek-by-jowl with the “Appassionata”, albeit wryly and fancifully separated by the Schubert. As big-boned and demonstrative in places as was the Beethoven sonata, Chopin’s piece seemed here to revel in its romantic associations with literature and history, the music bringing out Diedre Irons’ natural story-telling instincts as surely as the Beethoven had demonstrated the expressive power of her organic thinking. Her performance recalled for me her stunning playing of Liszt’s first Mephisto Waltz in the Ilott Theatre in 2004, shortly after she first came to Wellington to live.

Right from the declamatory opening one was drawn into the composer’s world of drama and spectacle – the opening melody so beautifully buoyed along by the left hand’s colourings and dynamic impulses, occasionally illuminated by flourishings that still managed to glint amid the laden acoustic – somehow, the pianist contrived to “float” details rather than allow them to submerge, an example being the repeated-octave note towards the melody’s end – enchanting! Though the more vigorous passages often got caught up in their own reverberations, the drive and focus of the initial phrases carried our receptivities through – again Irons used the weight of sound to hers and the music’s best advantage in places, opening up the throttle in places where the music’s harmonies had follow-through, and creating powerful results.

At the end I found myself thinking that it had all worked better than I thought it would, though I couldn’t help making a kind of “list” of pieces whose qualities would, I thought be beautifully enhanced by the cathedral’s ambience – parts of Messiaen’s “Vingt Regards sure l’enfant Jésus” for instance, or the B Minor Prelude and Fugue from Book One of “The Well-Tempered Clavier” – thanks, however, to Diedre Irons’ marvellous playing, we got what we were given, literally with bells on! – a truly memorable experience.

PS. – Jian Liu is giving the next piano recital at the Cathedral on Friday 14th November

Chamber Music Hutt Valley presents:
LUDWIG TREVIRANUS (piano)

HAYDN – Piano Sonata in E-flat Major Hob.XV1/52
MENDELSSOHN – Variations sérieuses in D MInor Op.54
CHOPIN – Ballade No.4 in F Minor Op.52
GERSHWIN (arr.Wild) – 2 Etudes : Embraceable You / I Got Rhythm
SCHUMANN – Carnaval Op.9

Ludwig Treviranus (piano)
at the Lower Hutt Little Theatre

Thursday 21st August 2014

What a programme and what a performer! Ludwig Treviranus won all hearts and engaged all sensibilities besides at his Lower Hutt Little Theatre recital last week, with playing and presentations of real, flesh-and-blood character. In his hands the music sprang into life – he could well have echoed the Oscar Wilde character who  famously remarks, “…anybody can play accurately – but I play with wonderful expression…..”

But there was more to the evening than Treviranus seating himself at the piano and pouring forth the music via the instrument – we were warmly welcomed by the pianist the beginning of it all, and made to feel as though we were giving to him, rather than the other way round, by our presence. He talked a little about each of the pieces, about what we would hear and how the music came into being. It all underlined our sense of the music being for him a living, meaningful entity, whose beauties he wanted to share.

We began with a piano sonata by Haydn, the very last of his sixty-two works in that genre. There’s still a tendency afoot to regard Haydn’s productivity as a composer with some condescension, to the effect that a lot of his music is that of a somewhat “watered-down Mozart”, that those vast numbers of symphonies, string quartets and piano sonatas are the result as much, if not more, of industry as of artistry.

Well, I’ve yet to encounter a symphony, string quartet or piano sonata by Haydn that I thought unworthy of its composer – of course there are “apprentice” works in each genre, as there are in Mozart’s output, but each has its particular interest and insight into one or more aspects of the composer’s writing which matured and flourished throughout many years of composing, not merely in the works of his old age.

So it was the somewhat confusingly catalogue-numbered Hob.XVI/52 in E-flat which began the evening’s music. Treviranus’s response to Haydn’s writing was typically whole-hearted and orchestral in effect – big-boned in gesture, while finely-wrought in detail. But he demonstrated the ability to maintain the line, the music’s overall coherence, while keeping a certain spontaneity, a sense of surprise and delight at what he was playing – all very engaging.

I did wish at the time that he’d played the first-movement repeat – but philosophies vary regarding this whole issue, ranging from those held by the omnivorously-inclined to the positively austere. Of course, ignoring a repeat can be like leaving something unspoken in conversation, sometimes to great effect. But it’s an attitude I’d mostly care to disregard in favour of that enrichment of the discourse, that chemistry of ripening experience which a repetition can heighten between music, performer and listener.

We relished Treviranus’s traversal of the composer’s quixotic development with its wonderfully discursive harmonic explorations. The musical flow took on a tremulous tightrope-tightening aspect in places, and there was a wobble and rhythmic stumble just after the recapitulation’s entry – but, more importantly, the rest went with a flourish!

And we enjoyed the richly-toned Beethovenian slow movement, with its anticipatory echoes of the latter’s Les Adieux Sonata, and its expressive impulses of energy – the pianist’s tones took on a warmth and glowing aspect towards the end that temporarily and wondrously stilled time, pulse and movement.  Then, the finale’s brilliant repeated notes and scintillating runs whirled us through paroxysm of pleasure – an occasional suspicion of “rattling over the points” in one or two places was countered by an overall exuberance which suggested to us a joy of recreation, served up for our delight.

Mendelssohn’s Variations sérieuses, next on the program, provided a perfect foil for the Haydn – at the outset, a dignified, baroque-like theme, followed by seventeen variations which energized the material in various ways, some of them remarkably Schumannesque in effect. Almost a compendium of early romantic pianism, the work brought forth both poetry and brilliance from Treviranus’s fingers, the pianist readily and wholeheartedly evoking the different character of each variation.

I particularly liked Treviranus’s playing of the parts of the work which seemed to take the composer “out of himself” – those sequences which had real glint and fire and sinew and muscle, including, of course, the Schumannesque Florestan-like bits.  These seemed refreshingly removed from the usual stereotypal image of Mendelssohn as not much more than a sentimental Victorian “Songs-without-words” composer. In fact the austere beauty of the work’s more thoughtful sequences played its own part in this revelatory “recasting” process.

Of the pre-eminence of Chopin in romantic piano music there can be no doubt, exemplified by the last of four Ballades written by the composer – each a dramatic narrative superbly sculptured, balancing heroic energy, romantic feeling and reflective poetry. The Fourth Ballade, in F Minor, is said to have been inspired by a Polish folk-tale of three brothers who, send to fight and destroy the enemy, win instead three brides – but I can testify to as much appreciation and enjoyment of the music over the years without knowledge of any such accompanying programme.

In any case, Treviaranus’s involvement with the music and the vividness of his characterization of the different episodes readily took me to a world of my own fashioning, with characters, ambiences and scenarios disconcertingly intermingling with the sounds. The playing seemed to me to convey all the right instincts for this music, the mood dreamy and tender at the work’s beginning, before darkening with resolve and quickening with energy as the narrative aspect took shape, but ever ready to entertain a remembrance of that opening tenderness at appropriate moments.

Not even a momentary derailing within a sequence impeded the music’s flow from the pianist, as the piece’s second half inexorably tightened its grip upon the music’s phrasing  and pulse, detailings and dynamics, and left us nicely breath-bated as we awaited the coda’s onslaught. A pianist friend who accompanied me to the concert admired the “coolness under pressure” of the young musician, the misdirected impulse and its retraction very adroitly making good part of the territory of live music-making.

After an interval we were treated (literally) to two delightful manifestations of the arranger’s art, in the form of a pair of  Etudes, virtuosic re-enactments of Gershwin’s songs contrived by the great American pianist Earl Wild. First came the flowing ease of “Embraceable You”, deliciously replete with arpeggiated counterpoints to the melody; and then followed “I Got Rhythm”, the music all angularity at the start, before galloping away with exuberant joy, returning for a kind of fox-trot, at which I’m sure people would have got up and danced to had there been available floor-space on which to strut their stuff.

The principal business of the evening’s music-making was, of course, Schumann’s Carnaval, a colourful collection of character-pieces depicting people both real and imagined, in the guise of revellers at a masked ball. Schumann had, in his earlier work, Papillons, produced a similar, if smaller-scale scenario, with particular reference to a novel Die Flegejahre by Jean-Paul Richter. By comparison, Carnaval is a grander design, incorporating not only character  sketches but a whole creative philosophy, embodied in the work’s triumphal finale, where Schumann’s artistic brothers and sisters, the Davidsbündler, put to flight the “Philistines”, the composer’s name for the musical reactionaries of the day.

To an extent all performances of great music represent work in progress, with artists continually and repeatedly striving to realise, unto themselves and their listeners, what these works have to offer. By turns forthright, quixotic, tender, philosophical, playful and enigmatic, this music requires of the performer a disconcerting range of abilities and sympathies for the composer’s purposes to be sufficiently activated.

Ludwig Treviranus had, by this stage of the evening, impressed with his vivid and engaging characterisations (Haydn), his concentration and strength of purpose (Mendelssohn), his poetic and dramatic instinct (Chopin) and his sense of fun and gaiety (Gershwin/Wild). All of these things were brought to bear in his playing of Carnaval, so that Schumann’s parade of colourful personalities was brought vividly to life.

Two things, each playing a part in prompting my “work-in-progress” remarks above – I did sense at the work’s beginning and end a whiff of caution in the playing in places where full-blooded exuberance (Schumann did nothing by halves!), even at the risk of inaccurate detail (a frisson of which briefly happened, to no deleterious effect whatever, during the work’s Preamble) needs to be the order of the moment. Unfortunately, in today’s chromium-plated world of piano technique, wrong notes are regarded as unforgivable – whereas a different generation of pianists knew well the value of their galvanising effect!

More importantly, I thought the decision to leave out most of the repeats throughout the episodes had a diminishing effect on the work as a whole – turning parts of it to my ears into a kind of “Visions fugitives”! Perhaps Treviranus thought that the repeats would make the piece too much of a long haul for the audience – being of the omnivorous rather than of the austere persuasion I simply wanted the music’s full measure – and my remarks regarding the enriching effect of being able to spend more time as a listener with a characterisation, an ambience, a mood, a state of being, apply here as strongly.

Enough of this carping! – the rest of my scribbled notes bear testimony to the life and colour of Treviranus’s performance, with far too many felicitous details for me to individually dwell upon. We were then prevailed upon by the pianist to applaud the piano (which we did) and afterwards help conclude the proceedings in singular fashion by singing along with the final encore “Show me the way to go home”. These Hutt Valley people certainly know how to do things properly.

Classical Expressions 2014 presents
Jian Liu (piano)

WILLIAM BYRD – Hugh Ashton’s Grownde (from “My Ladye Nevells Book”)
SOFIA GUBAIDULINA – Chaconne
JS BACH / FERUCCIO BUSONI – Chaconne
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN – 6 Variations in F Major on an Original Theme
JOHANNES BRAHMS – Variations on a theme of Paganini

Classical Expressions, Upper Hutt
The Gillies Group Theatre

Monday 21st July 2014

I missed whatever printed or spoken announcement had alerted others to the re-arrangement of the programme order – so that when Jian Liu began his Classical Expressions recital with William Byrd instead of Sofia Gubaidulina, I experienced a kind of reverse apoplexy! I had girded my loins in preparation for a Slavic onslaught of sorts, and was thus completely and disconcertingly rendered helpless by the gentle Tudor-English melancholy of Byrd’s treatment of a fellow-composer’s “ground” (a bass pattern to which melodic and harmonic variations are added).

It may have been a mere echo of my expectation of hearing Sofia Gubaidulina’s work – but in the opening theme of Byrd’s music I thought I caught more than a hint of plainchant mode, a phrase or two whose trajectory resonated like a sung phrase from an Orthodox service. Of course, as well it might have been Byrd’s own background as an English Catholic bringing out a Latin plainchant phrase or manner, however secular in intent the actual work was.

The music in this case came from a collection called My Lady Nevelles Booke, one which Byrd himself had compiled as a gift to the “lady” in question (one of his pupils). In doing so Byrd immortalized both her and (with this particular piece) his slightly older contemporary Hugh Ashton, devising wonderfully exploratory figurations and strongly-wrought harmonies and counterpoint figures to go with the older composer’s ground bass.

Jian Liu gave a predictably lucid, beautifully-voiced set of responses to the music’s different variations, though early on there were places where I thought he kept the trill-laden figurations on too tight a rein. I wanted more sense of the fantastical, more spontaneous unfolding of those trills and their laughter and sense of wonderment. Here it seemed as though the figurations were a shade too stiff in effect, and their roundings-off at times too abrupt.

It could have been that Liu was deliberately contriving this effect, feeling that the music had sufficient wonderment in itself, and needed clarity and shape, without allowing too much indulgence. As the music grew in animation and vigour, Liu’s playing seemed to relax and knit more readily with the fantastical textures, his control giving the composer’s arguments and counter-arguments great eloquence, especially in the Ninth Variation, and making the most of the welter of notes over the following two variations, and the harmonic richness of the tune’s final statement.

Sofia Gubaidulina’s Chaconne gave us the greatest possible contrast with the Byrd in terms of its dynamic angularity and overall physical impact. Liu gave the opening playing of astonishing power and girth, building granite-like structures, around which circled angular counterpoints and leap-frogging figurations. Mad boogie-woogie sequences crashed to earth, the remnants picking themselves up and dashing madly hither and thither in desperately fugal pursuits. One marvelled at the composer’s seemingly endless keyboard inventions, time and again setting immovable objects against irresistible forces, as with rampant left-hand octaves terrorizing right-handed chords into cowering submission (shades of Shostakovich, here, probably cavorting in glee!).

All of these irruptions and coruscations were delivered by Liu with strength, brilliance and fearless resolve, going to the heart of each of the variations with unerring instinct. From a sequence in which the music was becalmed grew bell-sounding impulses, both tinitinabulations and “strong gongs groaning”, the bright-voiced bells building the excitement, supported by wondrously deep-throated clamoring from the turrets and towers of cathedrals.  Then, majestically, the work’s opening returned, as jagged and angular as before, but with extra, insistent octave support from the left hand, Liu beautifully controlling the textures, and allowing the silences to drift softly backwards as the voices took their leave of us.

That miracle of adaptation, Busoni’s “realization” of JS Bach’s mighty Chaconne from the Violin Partita No.2 BWV 1004, was merely one aspect of the pianist’s veneration for the older composer and his works – he also produced his own editions of The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Partitas, and the English and French Suites. With the Chaconne, Busoni thought it possible to recreate the work from a more theatrical and Romantic perspective, thereby adding to his age’s understanding of the music. I’ve not been able to find any additional evidence for the story (which I read somewhere) of Busoni touring with the violinist Ysaye, frequently hearing him play the Chaconne as part of the Partita, and eventually producing his transcription of the work, and playing it to the stupefied violinist, after cautioning him to refrain from making any comments until he, Busoni, had finished the performance!

Busoni wrote his transcription in 1892, dedicating the work to the celebrated pianist Eugene d’Albert, who apparently was not pleased – in fact d’Albert reproached Busoni for what he called “tampering” with the original, but the latter was famously unrepentant. In fact Busoni’s reply to d’Albert deserves to be quoted – “I start from the impression that Bach’s conception of the work goes far beyond the limits and means of the violin, so that the instrument he specifies for performance is not adequate.” As was his wont, Bach had left no performance instructions – dynamic or tempo markings – on his manuscript, aside from the notes themselves. The work and its possibilities remained alive in Busoni’s thoughts for many years afterwards as he revised his transcription at least three times.

Jian Liu’s playing certainly entered into the spirit of Busoni’s “theatrical and Romantic perspective” – here, expressed through his hands, was grandeur set alongside rapt intimacy, variegated pianistic colour next to simple transparency, harmonic augmentation and single voicing. Throughout, both player and instrument sounded Bach’s music-framework in full conjunction with Busoni’s creative responses to the same. At times the virtuoso charge of it all was edge-of-the-seat stuff, as with the left hand octaves thrillingly driving the tight-handed figurations with Lisztian brilliance, or both hands harmonizing cascades of pealing bells while some of the gentler musings had whole sea-changes of mood, such as the contrast of “withdrawal” from major to minor mode three-quarters of the way through the piece.

Both the interval and the Beethoven work which followed provided relief of sorts from the overwhelming weight of concentration from both music and performance, and from the orchestral weight of sound made to emanate from the piano. “Beethoven’s “Enigma” Variations” quipped a friend, upon seeing the “On an Original Theme” subtitle to the work – though not quite as far-reaching or as enigmatic as Elgar’s, Beethoven’s variations are unusual in that each piece is in a different key. This work, from 1802, marked an intensification of creativity for the young composer, what he called a “new road”, and along which he was shortly to squarely face his life’s first major crisis, the onset of his deafness. This work, however, gives little sign of impending tragedy, the theme a brief but lovely cantabile melody, the variations discursive and imaginative.

Jian Liu brought out the character of each variation with great relish, the bagatelle-like D-major, the rumbustious B-flat-major with its contrasting high and low registering, the graceful, drawing-room-like E-flat-major, the purposeful march-like C Minor, with its Schumannesque pre-echoes, and the final adroit merging into C major and then F Major, the Mozartean flow punctuated by Beethovenian muscle at cardinal points! Liu played the flowing, rippling passagework which decorated the final Adagio beautifully, the cascadings giving way to a simple, unadorned fragment of the original theme at the end.

Rounding off this evening’s presentation of virtuosic chaconne-like works came one of the most fearsome – the Variations on a Theme of Paganini, by Brahms. This work is one of the “big three” adaptations (the other two are by Rachmaninov and Lutoslawski) of violinist and composer Niccolò Paganini’s 24th and last Caprice from his set of Caprices for solo violin. And, for the adventurous, there seem to be plenty more explorations of the same work by composers employing a bewildering range of instruments, from traditional to techno-based.

At first the combination of Brahms and Paganini would seem incongruous – here, after all, was the champion of the conservatives exploring and extending the music of one of the great romantic virtuosi. Parts of the work sound also as though they could have been written by Liszt, whose music Brahms had little time for. But the common ground here was the young pianistic wizard Carl Tausig, Liszt’s favourite pupil (“When the little one goes on the road I shall shut up shop!” Liszt was reported to have said of Tausig). Refusing to align himself exclusively with either conservative or radical elements of the age, Tausig also befriended Brahms, who wrote the Paganini Variations for him, calling them “Studies for Pianoforte”. One critic described the requirements for any interpreter of these pieces as “fingers of steel, a heart of burning lava and the courage of a lion”.

Jian Liu certainly had those prerequisites, engaging the work’s difficulties, both technical and interpretative, with strength, flair and purpose. Never over-flamboyant at the keyboard, his seemingly tireless fingers, wrists and arms channelled a bewildering amalgam of complex responses and emotions into the music’s heart, realizing its brilliance, power, charm, exhilaration and tragedy. To choose individual variations for comment would seem almost churlish, as it was Liu’s overall sweep which impressed most, in retrospect, his integration of the disparate elements, making the work seem like a true reconciliation between form, technique and emotional content. One came away from this performance with a deeper appreciation of the composer, of his music, and of the times that produced such an outpouring of creative imagination.

Wellington Chamber Music presents:
JOHN CHEN (piano)

BARBER – Piano Sonata in E-flat Op 26
BEETHOVEN – Piano Sonata in C Minor Op.111
MENDELSSOHN – 7 Character Pieces Op.7 – Nos 3 and 5
HINDEMITH – Piano Sonata No.3 in B-flat Major (1936)

St.Andrew’s-on-the-Terrace, Wellington

Sunday, 18th May 2014

This was in many respects a masterly recital, a most interesting and, indeed, challenging programme, delivered by John Chen with piano-playing whose seismic performance energies in places would have given the foundations of St Andrew’s-on-the-Terrace a particularly singular workout. It was music that seemed to bristle with challenges for the pianist, though a different kind of challenge for both player and audience was due, I thought to the running order of the music that was chosen. I did know beforehand, for example, that both Beethoven’s Op.111 Sonata and Samuel Barber’s 1949 Piano Sonata were being performed, but not that they would be put right next to one another.

At the point when John Chen finished his blistering traversal of the Barber, which opened the program, I was ready for strong coffee, or something of an even more restorative nature! This was by way of my feeling somewhat drained of listening energy through close proximity to such supercharged music-making. What I really didn’t want to happen at that particular moment in time was to then be confronted with the alarming incongruity of encountering nothing less than Beethoven’s Op.111.

But here was this young pianist, having thrown off one of the great keyboard masterworks of the twentieth century with huge aplomb and complete commitment to the cause, ready to climb a different kind of Everest, with what seemed scarcely a pause for breath. It seemed a fraction – well, excessive……Perhaps if someone had appeared and said something like, “There will be a short break before the programme’s next item….” we would have been able to better realign our sensibilities for what was to follow.

Once Chen began the Beethoven, certain things about his playing of the music compounded the incongruity. With the Barber work he seemed to have both understood and fully entered into the music’s free-wheeling spirit of fearless creative ferment. However, his playing throughout the opening of the Beethoven work seemed somewhat constrained, the rough-hewn, elemental piano-writing I thought a shade too moderated in effect, to convey a sense of the music’s composer hurling his message outwards and upwards towards the heavens.

So much about his reading was to be admired – its pacing, timing, clarity of fingerwork and overall structuring all seemed clearly thought-out, and skilfully brought into play – and perhaps, in a different context it would all have convey more of the music’s intrinsic character. But after that performance of the Barber work it seemed to me as though Chen had with the Beethoven become too intent on conveying the music’s different “style”, instead of trying to directly get to grips with the work’s physical, emotional and spiritual content.

Symptomatic of this approach to the music was Chen’s omission of the first-movement repeat, as if for the pianist some structural logic was best served by its excision. I find its inclusion a significant intensification of the music’s character, a fleshing-out of the composer’s own dictum that “the idea counts more than its execution”. Removing the passage might serve some abstracted formal symmetry, but surely detracts from the range and scope of Beethoven’s emotional and spiritual architecture. It’s not quite a stylistic matter, but again it raises the question of priorities, this time regarding form and content and their relative importance. Of course, as with so many things musical, opinions will vary.

Going back to the issue of which piece should have followed which, my preference would have been for the pianist to have re-aligned the program, beginning with either the Hindemith Sonata or the Mendelssohn Character Pieces instead of the Barber Sonata, and playing the latter as a barnstorming finale  – after which, of course, the coffee would go down REALLY well!  But one day, I hope Chen will choose another alternative solution when programming Op.111, which will be to bring more of his own particular kind of creative abandonment to his playing and interpreting of the work. I don’t mean he should be riding roughshod over the music’s stylistic elements, but nor should they inhibit or be treated as ends in themselves – they’re a starting-point, a springboard from which to express Beethoven’s idea as the player sees fit and feels the music.

The remainder of the program seemed admirably suited to John Chen’s skills and sensibilities. Mendelssohn’s two Character Pieces (Op.7 Nos. 3 and 5) in places literally bubbled with enjoyment in the pianist’s hands. These were both fugal, and were from a set of seven, which the composer called “Character Pieces”, in line with how fugues were regarded by the Romantics, responding to the moods and intensities created by the interplay of different voices. In No.3 I enjoyed both the “ring” of the pianist’s right-hand work and the lovely singing quality he brought out from the lines, while the following, more devotional-sounding opening of No.5 gradually grew in warmth and momentum here, towards a wonderful and celebratory conclusion.

Paul Hindemith’s music is often a puzzlement for listeners mindful of reputation and prevailing attitudes. Contrary to the “dry and academic” labels which my early encounters with descriptions of his music seemed to repeatedly turn up, his music seems to me as deeply-felt as any, and in some instances, great fun to listen to. There is a certain rigour at times – but while I wouldn’t characterize the composer’s Third and last Piano Sonata as a barrel of laughs, it’s as readily approachable as any of the composer’s trio of works in this genre. Central to this accessibility is the first movement which uses a beautiful, slightly folksy melody that for me recalled a tune in Gustav Holst’s Brook Green Suite. Here Chen confidently and whole-heartedly brought out all the composer’s variants and developments of the theme in various “adventures” culminating in a kind of “laying-to-rest” ritual amid chordal progressions whose delicacies of dynamics were unerringly shaped, before the melody’s final winsome statement.

Then came a garrulous scherzo whose bumptious angular manner contrasted beautifully with a skitterish and sometimes gossamer-sounding trio (beautiful pianism, here), followed by a third movement March, grand and stately at the outset, but replete with lovely, mock-serious touches, Chen’s colourful playing by turns excitingly orchestral and atmospherically withdrawn. The fugal finale was a glorious undertaking, strong and assertive in places, more circumspect and playful in others – shades of the composer’s glorious Weber Symphonic Metamorphosis breaking though – Chen’s performance doing rich and whole-hearted justice to Hindemith’s rigorously-organised but fascinatingly-varied world of sound.

At the recital’s end I couldn’t help recalling the words of Sir John Barbirolli in an interview I once heard, during which the conductor talked about ‘cellist Jacqueline de Pre’s wholehearted approach to music and performance, and the reaction from various commentators to her allegedly over-fulsome style – “I love it!” grunted the maestro – “When you’re young you should have an excess of everything – otherwise, what are you going to pare off as you mature and refine your approach?” Which is not to characterize John Chen’s playing as excessive and fulsome – but that “excess of everything” referred to by Barbirolli is, I think, part of the essence of being a young performer, and wanting to encompass the full range of what music has to offer.

John Chen certainly exuded that essential quality in places throughout this recital – and we can count ourselves as fortunate that we’re able to share those moments, those transportings of delight when music combines with performance to produce something unique and memorable.