Tag: piano

Keyboard Inspirations

– presented by Dr.Jack C.Richards and the NZ School of Music

Music by JS BACH,  SCRIABIN, RACHMANINOV, SAINT-SAENS, LISZT, DEBUSSY, HAYDN, WANG

Pianists: Jian Liu, Tony Lee and Buz Bryant Greene

Hunter Council Chamber, Victoria University of Wellington

Sunday, 7th August, 2011

The pianistic feast provided by this concert was jointly presented under the auspices of the New Zealand School of Music and Dr.Jack C.Richards, an indefatigable patron of music performance and composition in this country. Compared with having the usual single performer at piano recitals, this triple presentation of keyboard talent had much to offer the listener, albeit at a somewhat disconcerting pace of change. Speaking for myself,  while I wouldn’t want every piano recital I attended to “mix-and-match” in such a manner, the variety of performance style and repertoire here made for a fascinating afternoon’s listening.

Three pianists were involved, two of them linked by dint of association with the School of Music. Jian Liu is the recently-appointed Head of Piano Studies at the school (succeeding Diedre Irons, who retired last year). One of Jian Liu’s post-graduate pupils is Buz Bryant-Green, currently studying for a Master’s Degree in Piano Performance. The third pianist, Tony Lee, provided some trans-Tasman input into the proceedings, currently a student at the Sydney Conservatorium, but already an international performer and prize-winner in both European and Australian competitions.

After a welcome to the audience by the Music’ School’s Director, Professor Elizabeth Hudson, one which acknowledged the generosity of Dr. Jack Richards in providing a Music Scholarship for Overseas Postgraduate Study available to the School’s students, the musical program got under way with Buz Bryant-Green’s skilfully-wrought opening to JS Bach’s Fantasia in A-Minor BWV 922, the player’s impulsive and freely-applied sense of spontaneity surely expressing what the Master had in mind with this piece. Bryant-Green colored each episode freely in pianistic hues, as confidently pursuing his characterizations as any baroque keyboard virtuoso would have done. The pianist generally avoided too “monumental” a quality throughout, preferring to emphasize the element of spontaneous suggestion, which brought out the fantastic and volatile characteristics of the music even more. I thought it a bold, and confident performance.

This was followed by a pair of works whose composer’s intent, almost two hundred years later, was just as fantastical, Alexander Scriabin’s 2 Poemes Op.32, played here by Tony Lee. Straightaway one was drawn into a world where impressions flickered like candle-flame, the deceptive salon-type opening of the music leaning into and out of a Rachmaninov-like lyricism, with a “dying fall” reminiscent of the latter composer.Not so the demonic Second Poeme, biting and dramatic, almost feverish in its claustrophobic intensity – both pieces delivered with a mixture of rhapsodically free and tightly-wrought playing, impressing throughout by dint of the player’s unswerving focus.

It was Jian Liu’s turn to impress, with a beautifully-delivered, exquisitely-detailed “Reflets dans l’eau”, from Book One of Debussy’s Images. The pianist’s fine touch was evident throughout, as was a finely-judged ebb-and-flow of tone, playing which unerringly drew its audience into the composer’s unique sound-world. Interesting that, though his fine sensibility and acute touch was again evident throughout the Liszt Mephisto Waltz No.1 performance later in the program, Jian Liu’s  exposition of the tale of Faust’s rustic amour for me needed more storytelling “juice” in places, more interactive energy, both earthly and supernatural, to bring about a proper fusion of the details he laid out so beautifully with the growing drama and tension of the story. The rude vigour and abandonment of the dancing couples need to melt osmotically into Faust’s suggestive importuning of a village maiden, everything mocked by flickering scherzandi figures darting and sparkling like fireflies around and about the dance-ritual. I thought the most telling part of Jian’s performance was the song of the nightingale and the delicate arpeggiations suggesting Faust’s success with his seduction almost at the end – though Mephistopheles’ laughter could have been, I thought, subtler and more insinuating, leading into the brief coda.

Liszt’s hand was in the previous item as well, a transcription of Saint-Saens’ Danse Macabre, but further edited for super-virtuoso effect by Vladimir Horowitz, and played with plenty of wizardry by Tony Lee. Those evocative midnight strokes gave rise to diabolical fiddle-tuning, the pianist surviving a slight mis-hit while tuning his strings (an interesting parallel with the beginning of the Mephisto Waltz that Liszt would have appreciated), then proceeding to deliver a powerfully muscular dance, with lots of diabolical scamperings sprinkling the sulphur in appropriate places. As I didn’t know the Liszt transcription, I couldn’t tell how much Horowitz had turbo-charged the virtuoso fireworks (most of Liszt’s transcriptions are remarkably faithful to the original), but whatever the composer, the transcriber and the super-virtuoso had done between them to the hapless “Danse Macabre” it emerged as a remarkably brilliant and atmospheric pianistic essay under Tony Lee’s expert fingers.

There was plenty of virtuoso “roar” at the outset of Buz Bryant-Green’s delivery of another Liszt work, the wonderful Ballade No. 2, a depiction of the “Hero and Leander” story from Greek mythology. I liked the way Bryant-Green balanced the outer and inner conflicts of the music, the pictorial aspects of the storm at sea, and the stern inward resolution of the lovers to be united come what may. A pity he then, playing from memory, lost his way mid-stream and had to dash out to get his music! – even so, I admired the way he was able to pick up the threads for us and continue. Away from the storms and stresses I felt the more “Italienate” aspects of the piece needed more focus and fullness, the beautifully “sung” lyrical theme delineating the lovers’ ecstasy here sounding a touch perfunctory, instead of being “owned” and deeply sounded and romantically celebrated (there was nothing half-hearted about Liszt, nor about the music he wrote). Something of the same dissociation of energy and lyricism marked Bryant-Green’s performance of Rachmaninov’s mighty B Minor Prelude, christened “The Return” by the composer’s contemporary Benno Moiseiwitsch. At first I thought the pianist was merely letting the agonized theme which dominates the piece simply “grow” at the start, and the impassioned central section was splendidly realized – but both the theme’s stricken return, and the cry of pain which concludes the piece didn’t, for me, pierce the heart as I wanted – instead, the voice was numbed and inward-sounding (admittedly, the interpretation made me re-think the music, though I wasn’t entirely convinced that Bryant-Green’s heart was completely at one with what was happening at those points). But still, here’s a musician to be watched and given all encouragement to further develop as a performer, in my opinion.

Jian Liu’s pianistic credentials were enhanced  further by a lovely performance of the first movement of Haydn’s well-known C Major Sonata Hob.XVI:50, the pianist still managing a sense of fun amid the athletic, no-nonsense approach. A pity we weren’t given the repeat, because there was so much to enjoy and so little of the sonata presented to allow the same! I liked the beautifully-pedalled touches of colour in the development, echoed in the recapitulation, and also the contrasting tenderness of the lyrical second subject (what a shame we could’t have had the whole sonata!). Jian also gave us an arrangement of a Chinese folk-song, Liu-Yang River, charming and suitably exotic. And to add to this panoply of pianistic riches, Tony Lee performed firstly the short but extremely volatile Sonata No.4 by Scriabin, setting the dreaminess of the opening movement against the positively volcanic irruptions of its companion (a wonderfully elemental experience) – and then the two very last of Rachmaninov’s Op.32 Preludes, firstly the chilling, Slavic water-crossing of the G-sharp Minor No.12, and then the grandly chordal D-flat Major homecoming of No.13, almost Musorgsky-like in its expressive power and suggestions of Russian soul. Both performances took us unerringly to these “other realms” of creative imagination, from a composer who’s still, I think to receive his full dues.

And, unexpectedly, there was more Rachmaninov right at the end, a work I didn’t know existed, written for no less than three pianists! – a Waltz and Romance, dated (so Jian Liu told me afterwards) from 1891, and with what sounded uncannily like a direct “crib”, in the second movement, from the composer’s yet-to-be-composed Second Piano Concerto! A lot of fun, for both musicians and listeners, not the least for that ghostly pre-echo of a famous and much-loved work.

Schubert: Piano sonata in A, D 959; Gareth Farr: Sepuluh Jari; Schumann: Carnaval, Op 9; Godowski: Concert Paraphrase on Strauss’s ‘Wine, women and song’

Ilott Theatre, Wellington Town Hall

Sunday 24 July 2011, 3pm

The middle of the second movement of Schubert’s penultimate piano sonata should not really come as a surprise if you have listened openly to the very opening of the first movement.  Not perhaps from just any pianist, but certainly from Michael Endres whose view is clear at once through the heavy, threatening, plain loud chords of the opening phase.  Alternating shafts of sun with heavy threatening storm clouds: fortissimo and pianissimo; Schubert has absorbed all Beethoven’s awakening to the potential of the iron framed piano, and he quickly understood its ability to express visceral excitement and fear as well as man’s compulsion to seek peace and happiness. Endres imbued the sonata with drama and menace. His fleet and light descending arpeggios are not the airy flights that I’ve heard from some players, but warn us of what lies ahead.

I have to admit to finding some of Schubert’s major works overlong, burdened by too many repeats of themes, too little modified, and repeats of entire sections which have fulfilled their purpose through a single playing, but such was the impact of Endres’s dramatic gift that there seemed not a moment too long in the quarter-hour first movement.

So we have been warned of the likely character of the next movement even though the first ends in a singular air of content. From its very opening, Endres somehow invests the Andantino which he played a little quicker that some pianists do, with a feeling of unease. Nevertheless, the rhapsodic middle part though it begins pianissimo soon became more violent and tempestuous, more like an improvisation inspired by terror, more unrestrained than I can remember hearing it before. The opening mood returns but calm has not come, rather it’s despair, not just for the composer’s own plight but perhaps for the world.

It made the Scherzo so much harder to accommodate though, for it is hard to hear this a anything more than a typically dance-inspired interlude. How have we deserved this after the terrors of the Andantino?

Something of the answer lies in the Rondo which begins as rondo finales do, but in the middle again there’s a stormy passage that recalls the terrors of the second movement. But both the third and fourth movements are filled with such glorious melody and inspired by such intense vitality and courage that we can be persuaded that life is good and that Schubert will live into old age.

Endres has been professor of piano at Canterbury University for over a year and has taken an interest in New Zealand music.

Gareth Farr’s 1996 piano piece has established itself in the repertoire, and with justification. The roots of the opening phase, in the 19th century, are a comforting element, for one soon loses the way with music that strives for ‘originality’ at all costs. There’s a Brahmsian density, there are Russian emotional depths, and there’s also, as it goes along, Farr’s own voice, a voice that has somehow made the gamelan his own, and has found an authentic way to recreate it at the piano.

Most importantly, there’s more than a trace of melody or motif which is the vital recognition element that attracts further listenings.

Endres tackled it (this one with the score before him) with a gusto and bravura that perhaps turned it into a Lisztian travelogue. His playing persuaded me of its legitimacy.

Carnaval might well be Schumann’s most popular piece. It’s certainly one that I discovered early and whose technical impossibilities I have struggled with over the years. Was the opening of the Préambule too loud? Not to me; double forte means pretty loud, and the whole of this section is marked ff with nothing but crescendo marks until the third page when p and pp are to be found. The contrasts as Endres forged them were very rewarding and they sounded right to me. The emphatic forte chords in Pierrot were robustly planted into its otherwise calm promenade.

Carnaval is simply a brilliant sequence of infectious tunes in highly contrasted sketches and portraits of the unique creations that Schumann evoked from many aspects of his life and imaginings: in part from Italian commedia dell’arte, in part from creatures of German Romanticism, in part Schumann’s friends, loves and objects of admiration (Estrella, Chiarina, Chopin, Paganini), and his own inventions like Eusebius and Florestan, and the Davidsbund. And Papillons are recalled from his own similar suite of pieces, Op 2.  As with much music that has some kind of programme or reference, the riddle is interesting but the solution is unimportant.

They all came off the page in vivid colours, filled with wit and boisterousness, with moments – some quite prolonged – of sentimentality-with-a-backbone (Eusebius), or mock grandeur. Rhythms were totally infectious and I felt that here was a German who felt a real affinity with Schumann (though Endres comes from southern Bavaria while Schumann was a Saxon).

The last item was one of those exercises in flamboyance and OTT virtuosity that actually surpasses the expectations even of the severest pedants. Most of the wonderful dances by Johann Strauss and many of those by his father and brothers are such that life might seem incomprehensible if they didn’t exist, like all great masterpieces. Wein,Weib und Gesang is one of the best Strauss waltzes; there are about eight great melodies which Godowski had great delight with, embellishing them impetuously, extravagantly, combining them into canons or counterpoints. Wonder if Godowski himself had anything of a melodic gift. If one doesn’t, what he did is the next best thing, and it would surprise me if Johann, in his Viennese grave, would have been anything but hugely delighted at the outrageous liberties taken, and he’d have loved Endres’s performance.

As if that wasn’t enough, we got an encore of more of the world’s irrepressible tunes from Gershwin’s Songbook.

In all it was a splendid recital that would have offered something to most classical music tastes.

Jun Bouterey-Ishido (piano)

Chamber Music Hutt Valley

JS BACH – English Suite No.1 in A BWV 806 / RAVEL – Le Tombeau de Couperin

BARTOK – Out Of Doors Suite (1926) / BRAHMS – Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel Op.24

St.Mark’s Church, Woburn, Lower Hutt

Sunday 24th July 2011

If you haven’t already done so, find a space on which to write down the name Jun Bouterey-Ishido, a space you’ll remember and can refer back to when the rest of the world catches up with this young pianist’s remarkable talent. Evidence was amply provided by this recital, filled with good things, and even more praiseworthy in that the pianist was able to make a fairly inertly-voiced instrument “sound” with plenty of the different music’s varied characters.

Jun Bouterey-Ishido sprang to pianistic prominence in 2008 when he won the Kerikeri National Piano Competition, impressing the judge, Australian virtuoso pianist and composer Ian Munro, with artistic maturity and potential far beyond his years. Born in Christchurch, Jun had studied previously with Diedre Irons, and then Peter Nagy, Gao Ping and Judith Clark, before being admitted to the Masters Programme at the Liszt Academy in Budapest, where he’s presently continuing his studies with Peter Nagy.

I was fortunate enough to have heard him play in the final round at Kerikeri, remembering in particular an exciting rendition of Ravel’s Alborado del Gracioso, and a powerfully taut reading of Schubert’s A minor Sonata D.784. Experiencing his playing again almost three years later, what freshly struck me was his engaging physical fluidity at the keyboard – if anything, even freer than before, the gestural choreography more expressive, but still in a way that focused entirely on what the music was doing. And although his aspect and mien remained remarkably boyish (most evident when acknowledging applause, his slight diffidence with that process at odds with his ease and command at the keyboard), there was a deeper, more profound effect about his playing that immediately linked his listeners’ sensibilities with the world of the music, transcending time and place, youth and experience.

It was this immediate connection which I found particularly memorable, especially throughout the recital’s first half – the pianist had evidently been thinking over his program, because he announced a change of order before he began, reversing the positions of Bartok’s Suite Out of Doors, and Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin, more a case of relating these works to their other companions, I think, than to each other, and with better results. So, after a richly-hued Bach English Suite we were able to enjoy a twentieth-century refraction of further classical elegance in the form of Ravel’s parallel tributes to friends killed in the Great War, as well as to his illustrious countryman, Couperin. I couldn’t imagine a more winning amalgam of freedom and elegance, clarity and colour as we got from Bouterey-Ishido in the  Bach work. Right from the beginning the playing had that timeless quality of sculptured marble, but with the life within awakened and activated. Perhaps for some tastes his playing might have been thought too plastic, too freely-conceived (but I would urge the doubters to consider the word “Baroque” with all of its connotations!) – for me he had the gift of being able to express the “inner life” of his phrasing with, in places, the liquidity of something by Debussy, yet convert the whole into a solid, enduring structure.

Playing like Bouterey-Ishido’s I find hard to “explain”, except to use generic phrases like “infectious” and “spontaneous” – his command of rhythmic gait seemed to have an entirely natural kind of impulsive motivation, a symbiotic process of music and performer creatively interacting. In fact this Bach-playing  gave me so much pleasure, i now find it hard to tear myself away from thinking and writing about it. Fortunately, Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin inhabits a world of similar poise and elegance, partly through its ostensible connections with earlier times, and partly due to the fastidiousness of the work’s creator. Here I noticed from the outset how, more than with his Bach-playing, the pianist’s decorative impulses were somehow tighter, their “filigree whiplashings” reminding me of the playing of Rachmaninov’s in his recordings – the notes are all there, but they’re delivered with the swiftest and deftest of touches! Bouterey-Ishido has the technique to generate larger-scaled vortices of impulse, whirlpools of sound that can clear like torrents of water cascading over rocks and turning to spray, an exhilarating effect at the conclusion of the Prelude to the Suite. A beautifully-modulated Fugue was followed by the perennially bitter-sweet Forlane, the rhythms kept beautifully steady, allowing the sounds to “flesh out” the available spaces and suggest plenty of orchestral colour in places.  And the Rigadoun was, here, a joyous irruption of energies set against moments of introspection, different states of being rubbing shoulders with one another.

But the emotional heart of this suite is the Menuet, delicately begun by Bouterey-Ishido with finely-poised tones, inexorably moved along in processional mode and expanded into a grand archway of feeling – from these big, rolling sounds the emotion was nicely gathered in, the mask of feeling re-adjusted and the delicacy of the opening re-established, concluding with a wistful, almost other-worldly tremolando figure. By contrast the brilliant Toccata carried both rhythmic drive and rhapsodic asymmetry along its exuberant course, well captured by the pianist, revelling in the opportunities for orchestral weight and brilliance.

After this, the “earthiness” of Bartok’s Out of Doors Suite came as a bit of an aural shock, albeit an exhilarating one. No aural quarter was given by Bouterey-Ishido throughout the opening “With Drums and Pipes”, the succeeding “Barcarolla” seeming almost to creep out from behind the shelters after the opening onslaught, establishing uneasy undulations and dark-browed, short-breathed melodies. The pianist resolutely took to the insistent patterning of the “Musettes” – a strangely claustrophobic evocation for an out-of-doors piece. By contrast the dark of night’s spaces was all-enveloping in Bouterey-Ishido’s hands throughout “Musiques nocturnes”, the loneliness exacerbated by snatches of folk-melody wandering throughout the dark. All the stops were pulled out for the concluding “Chase”, the pianist’s reserves of strength and energy put to overwhelming, almost cataclysmic use.

The interval gave us all a chance to properly digest the already meaty substance of the first half’s fare, before tackling what had seemed on paper like the recital’s main course, Brahms’ magnificent Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel. If not the Everest of the romantic piano literature, the work belongs among the highest of the pianistic Alps; and it requires a robust amalgam of virtuoso bravura, visionary zeal and poetic sensibility to bring off. One of the work’s difficulties for the performer is judging the extent to which each variation ought to be characterized according to its own intrinsic nature while making certain of the overall continuity, the inexorable progress towards the imposing fugue that snow-caps the structure’s magnificence. How much virtuoso bravura, classical clarity, or poetic feeling is needed at any given point, and with watt effect upon the overall structure? Happily for the performer, the “greater than ever can be played” rule applies to this work with a vengeance – its possibilities and potentialities for different expression are immense.

Had I been blindfolded and taken to this recital I might not have guessed the pianist’s age throughout the first half of the concert; but throughout the Brahms piece I found myself thinking, “A young man’s performance….” Everything was very direct, presented surely and unequivocally, an approach which brought out a certain purposeful unity to the variations, even if it sacrificed some of the subtleties and depth of expression of some of the pieces. The very opening, played with bright, forthright insouciance, had an extrovert quality that reflects a youthful view of the world, and the variations were entered upon with that same spirit of joie de vivre, knitting the theme and variation together, and completely eschewing the “motorcycle kick-start” launching of that first variation (a flash of virtuoso delight in rhetorical gesture which bubbles to the surface now and then in some performances). Bouterey-Ishido commanded the big guns necessary to deal commandingly with the octaves of Variation 4, though I thought he rushed No.7, smudging and losing a bit of detail. Here, and in the delicious Variation 10 a touch of impatience indicated that perhaps not every note of this work has quite gotten under his “skin”. The second of two deep bell-tolling variations was splendid, however, with the pianist again “snapping” his decorative figurations excitedly and urgently.

Against the occasional moments where I felt the music propelled a shade over-impetuously (the “hunting horn” Variation (No.14) had an almost manic, rather than an heroic, aspect) were the episodes, such as the Sicilienne-like No.18, Mediterranean in impulse, but with a lovely warm Germanic feeling brought to the playing; and the beautifully elusive, rather Schumannesque No.21, whose performances inhabited the music’s spaces with the conviction of complete ownership. Bouterey-Ishido fearlessly plunged into the waters of the final three variations, taking them in a single breath, perhaps sacrificing some of the music’s cumulative power to momentary excitement, but certainly with exhilarating results, the occasional splashiness part of the process. And his playing of the fugue was splendid, nicely arched towards the moment when the cascading bells break forth and flood the sound-vistas with a wonderful sense of arrival and fulfillment.

There’ll come a time when Jun Bouterey-Ishido’s playing of this work will fuse even more deeply with the music – but equally to be cherished is the here-and-now of his youthful whole-heartedness and remarkable physical and technical ease at the keyboard – I know of no other pianist who looks more “at home” with himself and his world when playing. The recital was rounded, in Shakespeare-like fashion, by “a little sleep” – a short but beautiful and dreamy piece by Kodaly whose title I missed hearing, thanks to rain which had begun to fall heavily onto the church’s roof.

SCHUBERT – Piano Sonata in G Major D.894 / Piano Sonata in B-flat D.960

Michael Houstoun (piano)

Mulled Wine Concert Series / Memorial Hall, Paekakariki

Sunday, July 17th, 2011

Waiting outside the Memorial Hall in a July afternoon’s wintry sunshine at Paekakariki was for me a kind of poetry in itself, colored partly by the expectation of hearing live performances of two of Schubert’s greatest piano sonatas, but also by the ambience of the open spaces, rugged hills to the east, and the beach and distantly lovely Kapiti Island to the west. I’ll doubtless be accused of “event-dropping” here, but I was reminded by all of this of my visit to the Aldeburgh Festival in Suffolk (too many years previously that I care to number!), where one finds a similar “homely” aspect to many of the concert venues, and the same rural outdoor “far-from-the-big-city” atmosphere that gives to the whole enterprise such distinction.

Inside the hall at Paekakariki, the excitement-buzz was palpable, the sense of an occasion somehow made more manifest by the community-hall nature of the venue – a kind of “music is where you find it” spirit that, as I’ve said, heightens the special nature of the event. I was not aware of Michael Houstoun having any previous significant association with the solo piano music of Schubert, and so this for me seemed to add to the concert’s specialness. Naturally, I knew Houstoun had recently performed with tenor Keith Lewis the great “Winterreise” song-cycle, as well as the “Trout” Quintet as part of Chamber Music New Zealand’s “Schubertiade” – so I found myself keenly anticipating the pianist bringing his own unique qualities as a performer to music I’ve loved for much of my listening life.

First up, and I think rightly so, was the G Major Sonata D.894. Like its recital companion, the B-flat Sonata, it’s a work whose first movement alone, when played with the repeat can dwarf in sheer size and scope the movements which follow, especially in the hands of an interpreter who emphasizes the music’s potential for what Robert Schumann famously called its “heavenly length”. Perhaps taking its cue from Schumann’s observation, there’s a school of interpretation that advocates the most spacious of tempi over certain of Schubert’s movements, more pronounced, I think, than with any other classical composer. But as with all great music, there are diametrically opposed notions regarding how it should be played, ranging from those rooted in abstraction and severity of symphonic form, to ideas which advance the feeling that Schubert’s work should all be thought of as subservient to song, since (following this line of thinking) he was a lyricist, and not symphonic in outlook, and that his structures should be regarded as little more than somewhat naively-extended melodies.

Michael Houstoun’s playing of the sonata’s opening suggested a course that took into account both structural awareness and lyrical impulse on the composer’s part. We heard at the outset phrases given plenty of air and space, richly-toned and with leading lines sung out, along with strong, well-focused chordings and clearly-etched melodic patterns, suggesting that the pianist took the idea of Schubert the long-term symphonic thinker seriously, though without, it must be said, going to the extremes of profundity attempted by the likes of pianist Sviatoslav Richter. Houstoun, to my ears, sought from within the movement a judicious balance between profundity and momentum that found the best of both the intellectual and emotional worlds of the music. Throughout the introductory paragraphs he differentiated the different voices with considerable sensitivity, withdrawing his tone for the minor-key utterance, and warming it with slightly more body for its repetition in the major mode – as well, he beautifully energized the music at the point where it consciously begins to pulsate, the melody subtly detailed (a slight finger-slip in the filigree right-handed runs possibly the result of the phrasing being, I felt, a shade too “stiff”, more an etched pattern than a dance), the rhythm given sufficient girth to remain relatively light upon its feet. I thought Houstoun’s observation of the repeat just that wee bit more exploratory and expansive – if, this time round, the filigree runs in the right hand seemed freer and more dance-like, there was also an added hymn-like quality to some of the more chordal utterances, very much a feeling, one could say, of a “song of the earth”.

The rest of the movement was as fine in Houstoun’s hands, with only a touch of “bluntness” at some of the phrase-ends suggesting that there were still a couple of corners of the work he hadn’t yet negotiated with complete ease. Largely his approach to the darker, stormier development was lean and forward-looking, more agitated than tragic in feeling, building up the chordal sequences impressively, but playing with translucent tones that never threatened to crush the music under its own weight. The lead-back to the opening was nicely “breathed”, as was the coda, the music’s “homecoming” aspect given plenty of songful feeling. The slow movement’s first few phrases energized the stasis of the first movement’s conclusion, almost too much so, I thought at first, thinking that those wonderful phrases weren’t being encouraged to “flower” with sufficient poetry – but as the music progressed, so did I warm more to the playing, thanks to the flexibility and subtlety of the pianist’s rubato. The music’s key-change brought a big-boned contrast, but also some beautifully pliant phrasings in the gentler responses – Houstoun actually surprised me with his readiness to yield in places, getting a lot out of the music with his beautifully nuanced contourings.

I liked the Scherzo’s characterful dancings, the pianist bringing out the music’s lilting qualities and playing the grace-notes that punctuate the line with great “point” and care. He illuminated the melodic line of the Trio with nicely-stressed harmonies and counter-lines, enjoying the music’s contrasts as the scherzo’s chords lurched back into the soundscape. As for the finale, the playing had all the rhythmic buoyancy one could have wished for (was there a touch of hesitancy over the transition into the “running” sequence?), with everything nicely pointed and dovetailed; and then, during the stormier minor-key sequences, plenty of invigorating “schwung” to muscle up the interplay and keep the momentum going right through to the opening’s return. After these exertions, the coda was like balm for the senses, a hugely satisfied exhalation which Schubert (and Houstoun) seemed to invite all of us to join in with. At the end of all of this there was general pleasure in demonstrating our appreciation of the performance, though I have to say that Houstoun’s playing of the sonata divided opinion in my party, a situation which always invigorates discussion and sharpens all kinds of critical evaluations, both in the process and its conclusions. A friend whose opinion I respect thought the playing up to this point “all head and no heart”. But I couldn’t agree, as witness what I’ve written so far; and, for myself, I thought it was a truly praiseworthy performance.

Having said this, I had to admit, at the conclusion of the concert’s second half, that the B-flat Sonata demonstrated Houstoun’s interpretative depth and identification with the music to an extent that the G Major’s performance, good though it was, didn’t quite achieve. From first note to last, Schubert’s final and greatest piano sonata brought out what I felt was a powerful and comprehensive understanding on the pianist’s part. Even when I wanted parts of the music played a slightly different way (softer, more yielding paragraphs in one or two places), Houstoun’s conviction regarding what he was doing was such at the time that his interpretation carried all before it, the result being an entirely convincing and marvellously played performance.

Right from the beginning, the music seemed to carry whole worlds of inward feeling, Houstoun’s treatment of the chordal melody sounding and feeling almost Brucknerian in its weighty expansiveness, the vistas opening up to accommodate the tones generated by those big repeated chords which grow beneath the melody’s repetition. Not as nuanced as, and much more insistent than the music for the G major Sonata, these were more direct and forthright sounds, dealing, as Houstoun himself would probably say, in fundamental material – and no more so than at the repeat, where it might seem to the uninitiated listener as though the basic fabric of the music is being threatened by some kind of “horror from the deep” – a critical episode in the work’s discourse, here brought off by the pianist with suitably awe-inspiring power and concentration. The development brought layer upon layer of intensification, leading to what I’ve always regarded as the “stricken” passage, repeated chords sounded underneath a minor-key melody, before the opening theme returns, stalked by its trill ominously rumbling away in the bass. By the time the opening was properly reconstituted, the work had truly become “road music”, the vistas opened right out in Houstoun’s hands, the momentum kept up, the soul inexorably continuing upon its journey, bequeathing us those richly voiced chords at the movement’s end.

What a lovely colour Houstoun gave the opening of the slow movement! – its tolling bell aspect was beautifully and sensitively weighted, equivocally poised between worlds of foreboding and resignation. The music carried easefully into the major-key episode, the pianist’s rhythmic trajectories both focused and flexible throughout. Contrasting with this was the scherzo’s lightness of touch, set around and about an angular trio with Houstoun bringing out some startlingly effective bass-line accents. The playful and propulsive finale also harboured contrasting energies, the explosive mid-stream outbursts very much in keeping with the movement’s volatile character, as were the angular polyphonics leading up to the final energy-gathering pauses, and the torrents of abandonment which concluded the work. And my friend’s reaction to Houstoun’s playing of the B-flat Sonata? – words to the effect of “Well, he really nailed that one!”…..and when all’s said and done, I can’t really sum it up better than that!

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.