Tag: piano

DIEDRE IRONS  (piano)

– presented by the Waikanae Music Society Inc.

BEETHOVEN – Piano Sonata in C Op.2 No.3

CHOPIN – 2 Nocturnes Op.27 / Fantasy in F Minor

WHITEHEAD – Tūmanako: Journey through an unknown landscape

RAVEL – Le Tombeau de Couperin

Memorial Hall, Waikanae

Sunday 19th June 2011

To describe Diedre Irons’ piano playing as “thoroughly engaging” might seem to some too much of an all-purpose, over-generalized comment, out-of-step with more serious analysis of the kind one associates with a “proper” review. However, I think this quality of engagement is intrinsic to any discussion of a musician’s work as a performer in front of an audience. Irons seems incapable of playing a mechanical or dissociated phrase, so that for me it seems to all flow like life-blood, activating and sustaining for the listener whole worlds of feelings, ideas, impulses and actions.

In my ideal world I would want to hear Diedre Irons play all the Beethoven piano sonatas – I know that the great Rachmaninov once said that he didn’t play many of these works because “the Beethoven sonatas contain everything, and no one pianist can play everything”…..but I’ve often thanked my lucky stars that musicians such as Schnabel, Kempff, Arrau, and Barenboim (and, of course, our own Michael Houstoun), to name but a few, have ignored Rachmaninov’s dictum and performed them all, both in public and on record. Yes, Rachmaninov was right, in the sense that, as Artur Schnabel famously said, “These are works that are better than can ever be played”, and any pianist who essays the complete set of them has to cover an enormous technical, intellectual and emotional range of responses. But it can be done most rewardingly, and on the evidence of Irons’ playing for us the delicious C Major Op.2 No.3 Sonata with what seemed like a comprehensive grasp of the work’s expressive possibilities, I would welcome hearing more from her – in fact, as many as she wants to play.

Within just a few measures of the music’s opening, Irons had generously given us as many shades of expression as would a gifted Shakespearean actor on stage in one of the plays. Each note took on a meaning of its own, the phrases enlivened, the paragraphs taking us on a journey whose course featured many details of continuity and contrast, as befitted the work of a young, and wanting-to-impress composer. Irons brought forth warm, enthusiastic accents rather than overtly muscular contrasts, so that the music often smiled, and the minor-key exertions sallied forth beneath a firm, but elastic touch. Towards the end of the movement, from the recitative-like passages came an adroitly-pedalled foretaste of both the Tempest and Waldstein Sonatas, the pianist bringing out the work’s connections within a more widely-spanned context in a totally natural and unforced way.

The remainder of the sonata similarly enchanted us – a guarded, somewhat understated second-movement opening grew towards a marriage of delicacy and resonance, the right-handed figurations dancing over the step-wise columns rising from the bass regions; while Irons nicely contrasted the third movement’s interplay of mischievous and vertiginous trajectories with those wonderfully rolling arpeggiations in the trio. Contrast was also the order of the day for the finale, the gentle playfulness of Irons’ delivery of the opening a perfect foil for the grand and heroic second subject – a case of humor and delicacy alternating with bigger-boned statements, culminating in a teasing coda and a grand-slam final payoff!

Chopin’s two Op.27 Nocturnes which followed gave an impression of being two different “takes” of a similar view, a night-and-day contrast, for example, the C-sharp Minor all half-lit suggestiveness under Irons’ fingers, a shade exotic in its lyrical character, the opening sharply brought into focus with urgent toccata-like chordings, whose impulses of energy dissipate almost as rapidly as they rise up, allowing a “homecoming” coda of great beauty to steal in over the final bars. No such exoticisms trouble the second Nocturne in D-flat, whose more overly vocal lines describe an archway of melodic beauty and intensity, echoed by a “dying fall” as affecting in its way as its companion’s. Both works were here brought to life, not only as companions but as entities in themselves.

Insightful programming had the great Fantasy in F Minor placed after the two Nocturnes, with the audience taking up its cue and allowing the pianist an unbroken path towards the new work’s first sounds – the expectant tread of the opening in keeping with the composer’s intention of taking his listeners to the heart of a world of spontaneously-conceived feeling and incident. Very much like a Polish version of the Hungarian “lassu” at the beginning, the Fantasy then sweeps into and through episodes of vivid storytelling, Irons revelling in particular episodes such as the “storm and stress” arpeggiated flourishes, some magical arabesques of transformation, and then a hymn-like, almost devotional rapture, the whole quite Lisztian in its range and scope, though still Chopinesque in accent throughout.

I’d heard Gillian Whitehead’s Tūmanako: Journey through an unknown landscape on a previous occasion, at the “Sounztender” concert in May of last year, played by the same pianist. In a concert with established classics, the piece took on a different “feeling” for me to what it did on the previous occasion when played alongside some of its contemporaries. This time round the music seemed to me more abstract in effect than before, the result, perhaps, of my bringing some kind of expectation to the performance of the “we’ve heard the sounds – now, how well do they cohere?” variety. At the outset there were vast spaces, created as much by wide leaps between resonating notes as by the frequent silences, from which came various impressions of fleeting encounters, cascades of bitter-sweet arpeggiations, chordal evocations, cries of birds and other nature sounds, both tumbling downwards and taking flight. In places I felt a sense of reverence and an awareness of ritual, a feeling advanced by full-throated, bell-like soundings of things paying a kind of homage to a state of being, and an activation of the spirit.

A different kind of evocation came from Ravel in his Le Tombeau de Couperin, a tribute from one French master to the work of another. It took me a while to get onto the performance’s wavelength, to my surprise – although Irons played the Prelude with suitably motoric impulse, the dynamic terracings for me somehow lacked light and shade, the hall’s lack of resonance perhaps to blame for an ambience more clear-eyed than atmospheric. Only with the deliciously bitter-sweet Forlane did I begin to make connections with it all, increasingly beguiled by the changing faces of the music’s droll, but suggestive “revolve”. Irons gave the Rigadoun’s opening plenty of jack-in-the-box energy, nudging the succeeding trio episode along, with its deliciously “limping” rhythms, before the opening orchestrally crashes back. And nowhere was Ravel’s wistful mix of artifice and feeling more beautifully conveyed by Irons than in the Menuet’s astringent strains, the mask hiding the composer’s true feelings never more apparent. I thought the pianist resisted the blandishments of sheer virtuosity with the concluding Toccata, her rhythmic trajectories instead enabling the piece’s tempo fluctuations to grow out of one another and have a cumulative effect of energy and brilliance.

A Debussy piece to finish help return us to our lives – the audience’s appreciation of and regard for Diedre Irons’ playing was, at the end, a pleasure to join in with.

Schubert: Four Impromptus, Op.90
Gareth Farr: Sepuluh Jari
Liszt: Sonata in B minor
Gottschalk: Bamboula, Souvenir de Puerto Rico, Souvenir d’Andalousie

Waikanae Music Society: Michael Endres (piano)

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 15 May 2011, 2.30pm

A large audience greeted Michael Endres, a German pianist who is Professor of Piano at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch. He presented a varied and ambitious programme of quite lengthy works, including one by Gareth Farr, dating from 1996.

It was a delight to have the Schubert Impromptus on the programme. Rhythm was strongly emphasised, and there was never too much pedal. Endres had great dynamic control. Altogether, it was hard to imagine these pieces being played better, among contemporary pianists. Endres’s formidable technique was always at the service of the music. He does not move excessively at the keyboard, thus there is not the distraction one occasionally sees.

The first impromptu was like a plaintive song, as are so many in Schubert’s great songs: the ‘Wanderer’ songs, and Winterreise song cycle. Alongside this was a march-like quality, and then a dance-like second section. It was played with great delicacy, yet firmness.

The second had a totally different character – very fast and virtuosic. There were gentle episodes, but a fast and furious ending, while the well-known third was a joy to hear. The fourth, also familiar, was played probably faster than usual, but did not lose its lyricism or contrasts.

Rushing forward 170 years, we were confronted with Gareth Farr’s humorous and distinctive Toccata Sepuluh Jari (the title means ten fingers), which he attributes to J.S. Bach, quoting an imagined letter from the master, from the Island of Bali. As the programme note states, the ‘piano is partly used as a percussion instrument’, which most Balinese instruments are. However, it is important to note that percussion is not always loud. This was an inspired piece, and very musical and playable – by someone as skilled as Endres. It was very demanding and incessant, but an impressive piece of writing and playing. It was both melodic and dramatic, and occasionally even explosive.

Liszt’s monumental sonata is a tour-de-force to play from memory, being close to 30 minutes long. There is much dynamic contrast, even at the beginning. In places, the work is almost orchestral, while in others, delicately melodic, and yet others, blatantly theatrical, especially the ending. It features a motif repeated in various forms throughout the work, interesting rhythmic patterns and cross-rhythms; these are quite magical in places. The mood changes frequently; sometimes contemplative, at other almost aggressive, all based on a limited amount of musical material.

Endres brought variety and subtlety to this mighty sonata, which gave Waikanae’s new Fazioli piano a good workout, showing off its delicacy of timbre as well as its capacity for triple forte playing. Only once was I aware of a note failing to meet the challenge. Liszt was extremely well served.

For something completely different, Endres played Gottschalk’s three pieces. The sparkling Latin-American rhythms appropriately received much less sustaining pedal than did the previous two works.

The first began in a minor key, with an attractive, tender melody. The lyrical middle section was followed by a rousing ending. The second piece (sub-titled ‘Marche de Gibaros’, or March of the Peasants) had much charm as well as delightful rhythms. The final piece was full of fire – a virtuosic ending with powerful bravura. I must admit to thinking that pieces like this are designed to show off the skills of the performer rather than give vent to real musical expression (American Gottschalk was a virtuoso pianist). Nevertheless, Endres gave a persuasive reading as well as fulfilling all the technical demands.

An utterly charming encore, played in the top register of the piano was a piece that sounded like a musical box. After many beautiful arabesques, the mechanism gradually wound down, and then had a final flourish. It was Boîte à Musique, by Pierre Sancan, a French composer who died in 2008 (born 1916).

Michael Endres is a formidable yet refined pianist, and fully deserved the enthusiastic applause with which he was greeted after his encore.

Liszt Bicentennial 2011:  Au bord d’une source; Mephisto Waltz No 1; Sonetto di Patrarca; Les jeux d’eau à la villa d’Este; Hungarian Rhapsody No 14; Norma – réminiscences; Wolfram’s song to the Evening Star from Tannhäuser; Transcription of the Overture to Tannhäuser

Endre Hegedűs – piano. Sponsored by the Hungarian Embassy in Canberra and the Honorary Consul-General in Wellington, to mark the current Hungarian Presidency of the European Union.

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Friday 1 April, 7pm

The tour of New Zealand by this established Hungarian pianist had been organized some time before the February earthquake in Christchurch, but when the pianist heard about its devastation, he generously decided to give all proceeds from his five New Zealand concerts to help the victims.

I had not heard of Hegedűs, but that is no reason to imagine that he has little to offer.

I did not respond to all his playing but there was more than enough that I found interesting, perceptive and moving, and almost all showing arresting bravura and accuracy. In fact, though not among the top twenty perhaps, his international reputation is clearly thoroughly established.

The recital began with Au bord d’une source, from the First year – Switzerland – of the Years of Pilgrimage, uttered with splashy runs in scintillating tempi that shifted and slackened poetically towards the ends of phrases; the impression was of great clarity. Liszt is almost the last composer about whom it is safe or sensible to attempt to lay down standards or to claim to have a definitive interpretation in one’s head, and this piece introduced me to a lot that was individual and which only rarely sounded routine rather than the result of an individual conception.

The first Mephisto Waltz is one of Liszt’s most remarkable pieces: feverish, demonic, erotic and in the hands of a master, very exciting; and that was how this performance emerged. The three Petrarch sonnets are drawn from songs which are among Liszt’s loveliest and which are coming to be heard as important in the canon of romantic lieder, or in this case, quite closely related to the French art-song or mélodie. The piano version is gloriously rhapsodic and I’m sure there are those who seriously doubt that all the heated romantic passion is good for one’s moral health. So far I have maintained good health through a life-time of exposure to such pestilences. I enjoyed this performance immensely.

The fountains at the Villa d’Este which I recall seeing before being acquainted with Liszt’s guide-book entry, are beautifully portrayed in this piece from the Third year, Italy, of Years of Pilgrimage. It is possible to hear this as a succession of impressionistic scales and decorated arpeggios that evades the need for conventional musical substance; but bear in mind that the essence of bel canto, of which Norma is a great example, is its use of such ornamentation to express emotion. It makes its impact in much the same way as did the confessed French impressionists fifty years later. Again, water, whether flowing, churning, jetted or as storm-tossed seas, are among the most often used and evocative inspirations of the romantic imagination in all the arts, and Hegedüs was not wrong in his generous application of effects that created vivid visual impressions, working openly on the emotions.

The first half ended with the flamboyant 14^th Hungarian Rhapsody. It has other manifestations, as Hungarian Rhapsody No 1 for orchestra (which, coincidentally, you’d have heard the next morning, about 9am Saturday, on RNZ Concert), and a later version for piano duet (also No 1 in that series) and for piano and orchestra, called the Hungarian Fantasia).

Hegedűs worked through its ever-changing moods, pushing them often to their limits, starting with quite formidable weight on the opening chords, then investing the big first theme with a quite individual rhythm, and taking quite open delight in what have come to be the despised ‘gypsy’ tunes as distinct from the ‘true Hungarian’ melodies that Bartok sought out and recorded later. The performance gathered itself up with increasing flamboyance and reckless disregard for the hard acoustic of the church and the survival of the piano; so that it increased in speed and loudness in a way that may well have driven off some who could hear it only as brazen exhibitionism.

The second half was devoted to transcriptions and reminiscences from opera. The first rode luxuriantly on the long, and richly lyrical lines of Bellini’s tunes in Norma. Its first impact was to draw attention to Bellini’s genius in that sphere; Liszt’s generosity of spirit towards other composers and musicians was constant throughout his life. While his transcriptions of operas and symphonic works were indeed vehicles for his own playing, they were just as much to honour and to popularize the operas themselves. Not that Norma needed any promotion in the early 1840s after its enormous success on the stage in 1831. The Norma reminiscences nevertheless, run the risk of smothering the rich melodies with needless embellishment and becoming something rather different.

In seeking background about Hegedűs, I came across an entry in Wikipedia that revealed his name among those whose recordings had been misappropriated in the Joyce Hatto scam a few years ago and which was exposed shortly after her death in 2006. Many of the alleged Hatto recordings appear in a fascinating list together with the apparent sources of each recorded performance. Several of Hegedűs’s are there, including opera transcriptions. Many of the Hatto forgeries were in fact performances by distinguished pianists like Ashkenazy, Hamelin, Bronfman, Marshev, Collard, Ingrid Haebler …. Hegedűs was in good company.

I have not found reviews of the ‘Hatto’ recordings traced to Hegedűs, but it would be interesting to see how critics heard them. The Norma reminiscences are not in the list.

There followed the transcriptions of Wolfram’s aria ‘O du mein lieber Abendstern’ and the overture from Tannhäuser. The Evening Star was poetically played with quiet chords though Liszt found it hard to bring it to a restrained conclusion. The overture soon succumbed to the temptation to grandiloquence and flamboyant rhetoric, somewhat unrelenting, and I had to confess to being rather overwhelmed by playing that became simply too reckless and loud, though never careless. It may have worked in a large auditorium well upholstered with a couple of thousand people; hardly in this space.

Hegedűs introduced each piece in words that were often difficult to catch but there was enough to reveal an engaging personality with a nice sense of humour; a pervasive love of his instrument and of Liszt’s music.

In all, Hegedűs’s brought to Liszt’s music an authentic romantic spirit that was poetic, as well as capable of grandeur and excess; and the chance to hear some of the rarely played opera transcriptions was a real bonus.

Waikanae Music Society: Inauguration of new piano

Bach: Italian Concerto BWV 971; Schumann: Kreisleriana, Op 17; Kapustin: Sonata No 2, Op 54; Liszt: Three Petrarch Sonnets and The Fountains of the Villa d’Este

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 30 January 2011, 2.30pm

For a long time, pianists and some of the audiences at the Waikanae Music Society’s concerts had been a little dissatisfied with the piano, given the character of the concert space, a large multi-purpose hall in which sounds could dissipate for those not close to the performers. For more than a decade the society had been accumulating funds to buy a replacement and the time came last year. The achievements of the Waikanae Music Society should be seen as a shining example to all other musical organisations.

In consultation with Michael Houstoun the society settled on a Fazioli and it arrived three days before the concert. This special gala concert, meaning somewhat higher than usual prices, drew a very large audience – almost 500. The piano seemed easily to reach to the back and many remarked on its richness of tone. (For an enchanting insight into Fazioli pianos, let me recommend a chapter in T E Carhart’s The Piano Shop on the Left Bank).

The recital consisted of one piece that Houstoun had played in the past year in at least a couple of recitals in the Wellington region – Schumann’s Kreisleriana, some pieces we’ve not heard from Houstoun, at least for quite along time, and one very singular piece: an extended four movement Sonata in the jazz idiom, by Nikolai Kapustin.

Kapustin is a Ukrainian composer whose training at the Moscow Conservatorium was orthodox enough, but quite soon he fell under the spell of jazz, and was influenced there by someone he called a great teacher, Avrelian Rubakh.

Houstoun’s performance of the second piano sonata (out of eighteen), a many-faceted piece, suggested a myriad of jazz pianists from Earl Hines, though Errol Garner, Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, Chick Corea, even Keith Jarrett – particularly Oscar Peterson, whose amazing virtuosity astonishes both classical and jazz lovers.

Houstoun has recently been exploring jazz, perhaps inspired by his association with Mike Nock, and his feel for it impressed both by its command of the often highly complex rhythms, the star-bursts of cascading notes, with whirl-wind scales and arpeggios, all played as if pouring out as improvisation both spontaneous and inspired. Nevertheless there were times when, in the more bluesy passages such as in the Largo third movement, a feeling of more total relaxation might have been missed, and some driving climaxes fell a little short of the rapturous excitement that a Garner might have created.

Perhaps it is a surprise that Kapustin had no problems pursuing jazz in the Soviet Union where Stalin had proscribed it. But Khrushchev’s reforms created a considerably more comfortable climate for jazz and Radio Free Europe allowed Russian jazz enthusiasts to hear it.

So while Kapustin’s interest was not main-stream at the Moscow Conservatory, what made it acceptable was that it involved no improvisation and its employment of classical forms with jazz influences kept it free from criticism. Kapustin said, “I was entirely free; no problems. My music wasn’t avant-garde.”

The second sonata and other music by Kapustin has been famously recorded by Marc-André Hamelin. I have not heard it but reviews are electrifying, and so evidently is his playing. But I would be surprised if it were to prove much more idiomatic and consummate that what we heard on Sunday.

Judgement about the worth of the music is of course something entirely different. For the moment, it must simply be regarded as a remarkable, highly entertaining piece, brilliantly played.

That is no doubt how Liszt was regarded in the 1830s and 40s, though there were plenty of conservative critics ready to condemn him out-of-hand (there are still some). Houstoun ended his recital with the three Petrarch Sonnets, sensitive, poetic, carefully crafted in terms of dynamics and rubato, but again, not as abandoned as some might have wished, to the romantic excesses that were the thing at the time they were written: and The Fountains at the Villa d’Este; all from the Italian book of Years of Pilgrimage. The latter, insubstantial but enchanting, and played accordingly.

In this two-hundredth anniversary of his birth I hope for some serious exploration of this somewhat neglected and misrepresented composer. Houstoun is an obvious proponent; he has made a fine start.

The recital had begun with a fine and intellectually quite severe reading of Bach’s Italian Concerto (homage to the piano); it was elegant and fluent, rhythmically firm in the first movement, gracious and thoughtful in the second, racing, but perfect in its clarity and spirit in the last movement.

Kreisleriana featured in Houstoun’s programmes last year, the Schumann bicentenary, and both Peter Mechen and I wrote reviews of the performances. Though an important and highly imaginative work, for me it doesn’t have the delight of Carnaval, Papillons, the Abegg Variations, the Symphonic Etudes, or the inspired rapture of the Fantaisie.

But a highly persuasive account of it. I will leave it at that.

Bach: Toccata in C minor, BWV 911; Scriabin: Piano Sonata No 2 in G sharp minor, Op 19 – first movement; Chopin: Barcarolle, Op 60; Dutilleux: Sonata, Op 1 – third movement: ‘Choral and variations’

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 10 November, 12.15pm

This was one of the more arresting of recent lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s, both on account of the interesting programme that Ms Chao offered, and the accomplishment of her playing.

One of the concert’s characteristics, whether consciously planned or not, was that all but the Chopin were very early works; yet all showed impressive evidence of their composers’ later greatness.

The Bach toccata is one of seven harpsichord toccatas that Bach wrote in his youth, though this one was probably from his twenties. A Bach scholar would probably find things that demonstrate the composer’s immaturity, but to one who does not lay claim to special perceptiveness in that field, the musical inventiveness and technical command of the keyboard and the music’s formal structure leave by far the greatest impression.

Elsewhere among Bach’s works, such a substantial piece would have been called a toccata and fugue – in fact two fugues, the second of which is a massive double fugue. Nicole Chao opened it powerfully, resolutely, making full use of the piano’s dynamic range, then dropping  suddenly to a quiet, delicate phase such as a harpsichord could not produce. The fugal sections presented an interesting range of keyboard colourings and articulations which Chao handled skilfully, never mind a slip in the second fugal secion. She turned it into a piece of some consequence, clearly the product of high musical intelligence.

Chao played the first movement – Andante – by far the largest of the two movements of Scriabin’s second sonata which he wrote aged about 20. In complete contrast to the Bach, this is high romanticism, wayward in spirit, its yearning melodic line ranging widely, employing already the intervals that are so typical of Scriabin. In playing of ever-changing colour and rhythmic variety, Chao evoked in its glittering hands-full of notes, the marvellous, moonlit seascape that Scriabin described in his notes about the piece.

Chopin’s Barcarolle, though the most familiar piece in the programme was the least successful in capturing the music’s complex, indefinable spirit, its sense of direction. With rather prolonged fortissimo passages, even with careful use of rubato,  it seemed not to capture the subtlety and tonal refinement that she brought to Scriabin and to the concluding Dutilleux sonata.

Dutilleux is now in his 90s, yet his oeuvre of major works is small. This sonata written when he was about 30 was the first to which he gave an opus number, so self-critical has he been throughout his life. Again, Chao chose to play the longest movement, the last; it stands on its own feet remarkably well, and Chao led an audience that was probably hearing it for the first time through a very able performance. Its opening rhetorical call to attention mirrored in a way the Bach Toccata (did that occur to her?), but there was no immediate fading to a pianissimo; instead the first and second variations drove forward with great speed demanding playing of impressive virtuosity. Only in the third variation does a meditative quality arise, and Chao demonstrated an appreciation of the structure, and the carefully thought-out evolution of the themes underlying the whole movement. A fine performance of the sonata was recorded by John Chen for Naxos about five years ago. It’s worth getting to know.

Nicole Chao however, gave an authoritative performance, persuading me that she might well reward us with further performances of music in the late Romantic and non-serial 20th century styles.

Michael Houstoun (piano)

JS BACH – Prelude No.1 in C Major BWV 846 / SCHUMANN – Arabeske Op.18 / Kreisleriana Op.16

CHOPIN – Sonata in B-flat minor (“Funeral March”) Op.35 / Two Nocturnes Op.37 / Four Etudes Op.25 Nos 1, 5, 7, and 12

Ilott Theatre, Town Hall, Wellington

Sunday 29th August 2010

Who says piano recitals can’t pack ’em in any more? True, if any pianist can here in Wellington, Michael Houstoun can, and especially so when the programme features the music of two composers whose spirit seems to exemplify music’s Romantic Age. This concert was a celebration of the year 1810, during which both Chopin and Schumann were born, Michael Houstoun unexpectedly and cleverly drawing these otherwise disparate figures together by way of JS Bach, whose music both of these composers revered. So we were given Bach’s celestial C Major Prelude from Book One of the Well-Tempered Clavier by way of introduction to the recital proper, the music pausing briefly to draw breath at the Prelude’s end before Houstoun continued with the equally radiant opening to Schumann’s Arabesque.

One of the characteristics of Schumann’s music is its extraordinary pliancy, so that, more than many other composers’ music, his responds equally well to so many different interpretative viewpoints. Perhaps it’s the subjective nature of much of it, to which musicians connect more on an individual and spontaneous basis than a preconceived and predictable one, resulting in wider performance parameters being explored regarding the music’s interpretation. Consequently, there emerges no “way” to play Schumann, other than to convey a sense of identification and engagement with the composer and his world. Reading between the lines of Michael Houstoun’s thoughtful programme notes for the recital, one senses, intriguingly, on his part a slightly more ready inclination to “connect” with Schumann than with Chopin, though in practice it’s a near thing. I would have hazarded a guess that Houstoun might have felt more at home with the Polish composer’s ultra-refined syntheses of structure and feeling than his German contemporary’s often abstruse flights of fancy – so I was delighted to find myself drawn in to many of the moods he evoked with his performance of Kreisleriana, one of Schumann’s most enigmatic creations.

Expertly played though it was, I didn’t immediately warm to the pianist’s way with the Arabesque which almost immediately followed the Bach – though he exhibited great control and evenness of touch, he didn’t for me “dream” enough of the music, giving us a strong, unequivocal opening, but not seeming interested in bringing out the almost “question-and-answer” manner of the phrases, the poetical ruminations, as it were. The first interlude was strongly, almost passionately voiced, and did relax for a few measures just before returning to the main running theme, the two impulses beautifully married for the reprise. I liked the “kick” with which he brought the second interlude into being, though his tone hardened in places of emphasis, too much so, I thought, in relation to the gentleness of the whole work, though his return to the main theme was again finely-judged, and the coda of the piece was given a winning mix of strength and poetic feeling.

Kreisleriana was, of course, an entirely different matter; and I thought the pianist’s almost headlong plunge into the tempestuous opening an approach the composer would have approved of, the occasional split note adding to the sense of wildness, the music seemingly unnerved by its own evocations, and wanting to climb upwards out of the maelstrom of raw emotion towards the light. Houstoun’s way with the wondrous contrasting second piece, marked “Very inwardly and not too quickly”, gave the poetical atmosphere enough space to generate a rich, warm ambience via the wonderful forest-echoing “hunting-horn” theme, and the beautifully harmonised scale passages growing out of the theme’s resonances – though the brief intermezzi which punctuate the mood kept their energies within bounds, suggesting more an architect’s than a poet’s view of the whole structure. The pianist also found a telling contrast between sections three and four, the pure emotion of the latter beautifully breathed after the previous piece’s agitations, and the subsequent quickening of the pulse nicely judged – for me, one of several interpretative highlights of the performance.

Schumann’s dogged insistence dominated the next episode, Houstoun controlling the composer’s obsessiveness judiciously so that none of the repetitive figures outstayed their welcome. Another beautifully-realised piece was the following folkish lullaby (sehr langsam – very slowly), the achingly nostalgic left-hand theme seeming to grow out of the earth, as it were, Houstoun giving the ambience the dark, rich tones requited by the music’s suggestiveness. After the next piece’s wild, headlong opening, galloping through tempestuous storms, Houstoun brought the agitations under control with some nicely gradated chords, leading to the work’s final, most enigmatic section, the composer’s marking schnell und spielend (fast and playful) barely hinting at the music’s darker, more equivocal undercurrents. Houstoun brought these out beautifully, giving the elfin melody a slightly disembodied tonal character, and beautifully weighting the left hand so that the often maverick rhythmic stresses of the bass notes had a properly disturbing effect. In general, I thought the interpretation of the whole very satisfying, more thoughtfully and subtly realised by the pianist than given by him overt extremes of mood, colour and energy.

In a sense, the Chopin “Funeral March” Sonata which followed after the interval posed similar interpretative problems to Kreisleriana – the difficulty being how to bring some kind of coherence to a series of overtly unconnected “episodes” strung together to form an overall scheme – though Michael Houstoun hit the nail fairly on the head in his notes when he spoke about “a certain spirit or tone which serves to unify” in relation to both works. Somewhat ironically, it was Schumann who complained in a critical notice about Chopin’s Sonata that “he has simply yoked together four of his wildest offspring”; although it was the bestowment of the title “Sonata” on the work that gave the hypersensitive critic of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik misgivings, not the music itself. Houstoun sought to keep the music directional by refusing to make too much of any contrasts of tempo or dynamics throughout the first movement, the most surprising aspect of which was the pianist’s incorporating the very beginning of the work in the repeat, something which I’d not heard done before. The music’s strong undertow was maintained throughout, reducing the work’s propensity for dramatic contrast, but tightening the musical argument and keeping a sense of purposeful forward motion paramount.

Contrast was the order of the day with the Scherzo, in Houstoun’s hands the opening section big, energetic and darkly-wrought, before being almost completely disarmed by the sweetness of the ballade-like Trio, with only the occasional left-hand trills suggesting any hint of continuing unease. I fancied I heard some kind of momentary harmonic re-arrangement at the agitated opening’s reprise, though it may have been my ears playing tricks with my memory – in any case, a mere detail, swept away by Houstoun’s bringing out of the power and purpose of the whole. Some extraneous deep-toned thuds from without accompanied the hushed opening of the famous “Funeral March”, to no matter – the pianist’s power and concentration carried the day, the playing perhaps less antiphonal than some performances I’ve heard, but just as telling in effect. Houstoun seemed to integrate the Trio into the March, making it less of an inward escape to another realm than a more lyrical manifestation of the same force propelling time and life onwards, the repeats helping to intensify this feeling. Upon the march’s return, one realised how differently Chopin felt about life and death – Houstoun’s control made the reappearance of the cortège and its ghostly dissolution a salutary experience.

What Houstoun then did with the finale was interesting – played attacca, the sinuous strands of agitation were kept clear and largely unpedalled, refusing the music any kind of impressionistic wash or colouristic atmosphere, making the notes themselves do the work and create the musical effect. Those used to listening to the highly theatrical realisations of people such as Cortot, Rachmaninov and (more lately) Martha Argerich would have found Houstoun’s determinedly unvarnished realisation either rather too earthbound or remarkably singular in effect – rather like a long-forgotten extra item from out of Mussorgsky’s Pictures from an Exhibition, or something. Here, it was of a piece with the rest of the sonata – coherent, focused, and cumulatively powerful in effect.

Strangely I enjoyed Houstoun’s playing of the two Nocturnes for probably quite perverse reasons – in a sense I would rather have a more instinctively poetic player to be my guide were I wanting to hear these extraordinary pieces; but I was amazed, especially in the case of the second of the two Op.37 Nocturnes, as to how “modern” the composer’s harmonic progressions sounded when laid bare by playing which emphasised the piece’s structure and inner constituent workings, rather than colour and a singing line. I would use the word “chiselled” to describe the way the opening of Op.37 No.1 was presented, the contourings very precise, and the sonorities in the trio section seamlessly organ-like. But surely the dynamic contrasts were raked too steeply at the reprise of the main theme – does moonlight come from behind the clouds as abruptly as that? Even so, I was made to listen to the barcarolle-like No.2 with what seemed like freshly-programmed ears.

Four Etudes from the composer’s Op.25 concluded the recital, judiciously chosen by Michael Houstoun to give a kind of “sonata” effect, perhaps (four more of Chopin’s wildest?), the first the beautiful Aeolian Harp in A-flat, the pianist getting a lovely “rolling” effect with the notes, and an especially feathery quality at the end. The C-sharp Minor No.7 followed almost without a break, its  melody beautifully “terraced” between the hands, building up an almost orchestral effect on places, with swirling figurations and massive chordings. The oddly “galumphing” No.5 in E Minor was the “scherzo”, with its Lisztian trio, Houstoun’s brilliant filigree right-hand work set against sonorous left-hand melody to great effect; while the final etude’s great ferment of whirling “Rachmaninovian” C Minor arpeggios glinted and flashed their melodic notes in truly virtuoso style.

All credit to Michael Houstoun for celebrating Schumann and Chopin so resplendently, and to Wellington Chamber Music for bringing to Wellingtonians that sadly diminishing rarity, a full-blooded piano recital. Some of the world’s greatest music (such as we heard this afternoon) deserves much more of Houstoun’s kind of advocacy and his near-capacity audience’s whole-hearted support.

Piers Lane (piano) – Waikanae Music Society

Schubert: 12 German Dances, Ländler & Valses Sentimentales, D779, D783 & D790
Brahms: Intermezzi in B minor, E minor, C; Rhapsody in E flat; Op.119
Beethoven: Sonata no.31 in A flat, Op.110
Chopin: Ballade no.1 in G minor, Op.23; Four Nocturnes,  Op.27, Op.48 & Op. Posth.
Schulz-Evier: Arabesques on the Beautiful Blue Danube

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 29 August 2010, 2.30 pm

What a well-constructed programme this was, celebrating Chopin’s bi-centenary, other supreme composers for the piano, plus a dazzling finale.  This was real pianists’ music: not out to be showy (with the exception of the final piece), but to be expressive.

Using a microphone, Piers Lane interpolated remarks between the groups of items.  These were informative, and sometimes humorous, such as when he told us that the words of the folk-song on which the second movement of Beethoven’s sonata was based had been translated as “You are a slob”!

The Schubert Dances he played, the pianist informed us, were made into a collection for performance by Dame Myra Hess.  He told us that he had created a show in memory of the great pianist, and performed it with actress Patricia Routledge as Myra Hess, the words being excerpts from her books, letters and interviews.

It was good to hear these pieces – it is rare these days to hear relatively slight items (in terms of length) in a recital.  Put together as a set with little or no break, the dances gave opportunity for great vigour and steady rhythm – one could have danced to them.  The result was delightful, though perhaps of  all Schubert’s works for piano, these would be more effective on fortepiano.

The Brahms pieces received masterful but sensitive readings from Lane.  He indeed, to quote the programme note quoting Brahms ‘luxuriate(d) in dissonances’ in the first Intermezzo.

There was great contrast between the second and third Intermezzi; the first was sombre while the next one was lively.  The heroic Rhapsody was just that.

Beethoven’s second-last sonata has a wonderful opening.  As Piers Lane expressed it in his introductory comments, the work proves that ‘one can have joy after suffering’.  Every note was distinct; pedal use was judicious and never blurring.

Contrasting with the poetry of the first movement, an energetic declamation of an allegro followed.  Then there was pathos in the exquisitely worked-out adagio.   This was thoughtful and expressive playing, by a pianist fully in command technically, and who has the piano at his fingertips physically, mentally and emotionally.  It was a joy to hear him play.

The first Ballade of Chopin becomes graceful and delicate at the second theme, yet there is great force and energy towards the end.  It was a feast of brilliant and virtuosic performance, demonstrating to the full the sheer inventiveness of this piece.  We were informed that the Ballade was dedicated to Schumann, and that both he and its composer loved it most of Chopin’s works.

It was a delight to hear the Nocturnes.  After the meditative first one, dark like a nightmare, broken by a bright middle section, the second was notable for the lovely singing tone and cheerful mood.  We were gliding by night on glistening waters.

The third, in C minor, has been described as imperious.  It was played more slowly than other performances I have heard, but seemed to gain effect from this tempo.  There was beautiful articulation in the last of the set.  Every note had its own piece to say, yet was part of the general flow.  It was mesmerisingly lovely.

The piece by Adolf Schulz-Evier (1852-1905) was quite amazing; a highly decorated paraphrase of Strauss’s famous waltz, that required great virtuosity.  It was a fast waltz, although slight rubati in the restating of the melody added interest.  It may be considered OTT, but what a triumph of invention, and of pianistic prowess.

The encore was by ‘a twentieth century British composer you may have heard of – Dudley Moore’!   It was the latter’s tribute to Beethoven.  Whether Beethoven would have been as amused as we were, we cannot tell.  The theme was the first part of the well-known ‘Colonel Bogey’ (of ‘Bridge on the River Kwai’ fame), and it was treated to many of Beethoven’s characteristics of composition – exaggerated, of course.  There was a touch of ‘Hernando’s Hideaway’ from ‘The Pajama Game’, even a fugue, and at the end of the numerous near-endings, touches of the Moonlight Sonata.  It was extremely clever, brilliantly played, and with some humorous gestures – though not as many as its composer would have employed.

We were treated to a demonstration of first-class pianism.  Piers Lane never came between the music and the large audience.  The composers were admirably served, and everyone present must have been supremely delighted.