Challenging
Performances Free Concert of November 16, 2002
The
latest concert featured pianist Carl
Gales, who last appeared at these concerts as an accompanist for baritone
Jesse Blumberg a few months ago. After
that concert with Darius in hand, I told Carl that he had to come back and play
a solo concert. Last Sunday after the
conclusion of his concert he laughingly reminded me that he had fulfilled my
request.
Carl
Gales is a very fine pianist, an exceptional pianist.
I was overwhelmed by his performance of the Beethoven Lebewohl sonata. Those of you who have been reading my reviews
may recall my calling it a scenic sonata in the style of Kuhnau’s Biblical
Sonatas, when it appeared on an earlier Challenging Performances Concert. Beethoven himself ostensibly provided the
story, describing his frustration and loneliness due to the extended absence of
his very close friend and royal benefactor, followed by (in the finale) the
release of frustration and the pent up joy at his return. Carl’s performance was magical. As fine as I thought our last performance had
been, this surpassed it by an order of magnitude. Right from the beginning it became apparent
that Carl seemed to be “living” the frustrated Beethoven, while in the second
movement the sorrow seemed so real it was almost palpable. What a change in the finale. It suggested to me the pet dog that erupts in
crazy gyrations, running this way and that in circles and jumping wildly as his
“master” returns home in the evening. It
may not have been a traditional performance but it was oh so effective. Beethoven himself, had he been allowed to
regain his hearing after joining the gods of music in their Parthenon, would
have been shouting “Bravo”!
The concert started with a performance of a Suite for Keyboard (the harpsichord at
that time) by Rameau. This suite based on the dance movement “the
gavotte”, is one of many such works which the Frenchman wrote. They are meant to be played squarely in very
strict rhythm; a loose performance will disintegrate. In an auspicious beginning to the afternoon’s
fare, the several episodes of the gavotte tune were played in exemplary manner
with rhythms you could set a watch by.
Then
after the Beethoven, he chose to play one of the masterworks of the late
romantic era, the Prelude, Chorale, and
Fugue of Caesar Franck. Franck chose to model much of his music on
the ideas which Liszt (and Wagner) had been espousing, among them cyclic form,
in which an entire composition was based on a single theme. Thus in the Prelude, chorale and fugue, the
chromatic generating motif of the prelude later becomes the fugue subject. The three movements are coalesced loosely
into one by the cyclical writing. Carl
played it to the hilt with loving attention to the details ensuring that the
inner voices of the fugue did not get lost.
After a brief intermission, he reappeared to play a Chopin Nocturne, Op 62, No 2, and the Polonaise-fantasie Op. 61, both of 1846 and late works of Chopin’s
short life. The nocturne is not one of
the popular encore ones but is a true “night music” conjuring up a wide range
of visions and emotions. The
Polonaise-fantasie is not like any of
the other fifteen Polonaises Chopin wrote in that it quickly drops the triple
time march tempo in favor of a more purely fantasy style. He himself felt somewhat uneasy about it, but
it has great beauty with a special dignity.
Both works present many pitfalls for the performer but Carl was able to
avoid them while making it look easy.
Next came the Blumenstuck
Op 19 of 1839 by Robert Schumann. Along with the better known Arabesque Op 18,
it is one of two short works of Schumann’s early maturity when he was writing
piano music almost exclusively. This
early piano music was inspired by two young ladies. The first was Ernestine von
Fricken to whom he was briefly betrothed, and later Clara Wieck, who after a
ten year courtship became his wife. Both
were his fellow students in Professor Wieck’s piano classes. Clara went on to become one of the greatest
pianists of the 19th century.
In Blumenstuck the flower petals change hue as they are seen in sun, or
various degrees of shade. Indeed we were
dazzled by the myriad colors which we encountered in this performance.
The program closed with L’isle Joyeuse of Claude
Debussy. After the romantic
richness of the Chopin/Schumann palettes, the harp-like arpeggios of
Debussy’s impressionism came as a cool, off shore, breeze from the joyful
Island. The work has some of the most
difficult music the composer ever wrote.
We were given a topnotch performance that the audience vocally
acknowledged. In response, Carl played a
short encore to bring the afternoon to a brilliant climax.
Everett N. Jones, III, Piano Soloist at Challenging Performances
Concert, November 3, 2003
Everett Jones was born in West Philadelphia and showed musical talent
and interest at three. His grandmother pushed his early training.
With help from Charles Petteway, he undertook studies at Rowan University which
led to Bachelor and Master of Music degrees. He is in Cincinnati at CCM
working on a Doctorate in piano performance with the Pridinoffs. Several
awards have come his way. Jones has a muscular, percussive piano
technique.
Jones chose a program of various shorter works. He started with two of
Johann S. Bach’s teaching pieces written for his children; the Little Prelude
in C, BWV 924 from the Little Clavier Book for Wilhelm Friedman Bach, and the
Little Prelude in a minor BWV 942, from the Second Little Clavier Book for Anna
Magdalena Bach.
He moved next to the music of Willima Grant Still, the first
successful Black composer who received most of his training in Ohio at
Wilberforce and Oberlin. Among his earliest piano compositions, and still
most popular, is his Three Visions of 1936. The three movements, titled
Dark Horsemen, Summerland, and Radiant Pinnacle, are based on visions of the
four horsemen of the Apocalypse, and a new beginning, leading to the Eternal
Kingdom. Everett played it as a tone poem, breathing life into its
darkest corners. His technique showed him most effective in the darkest
passages.
Works by Franz Liszt were the centerpiece of the
recital. He revolutionized writing for the piano; besides some
fiendishly difficult to play studies, he also wrote some very simple
works, in addition to the revolutionary programmatic ones. He chose
three, the Transcendental Etude No. 1 (preludio), the Concert Etude No. 3 (un
sospiro), and Funerailles,
With technique to spare, the etudes were tossed off with ease in brilliant if
somewhat subdued fashion.
Invocation, followed by Dance I and Dance II. It is successful without being
truly memorable. Invocation is nostalgic while the Dances incorporate hints of
his experience as a pianist in a jazz band. It was a sympathetic, deeply
felt, performance.
Works by Federico Mompou followed. Mompou, a Spaniard, wrote in a somewhat impressionist form ala Debussy colored by the primitiveness of Eric Satie. Most of his works are piano miniatures, usually involving popular themes, with a minimum of modulation or development. Many are pastels of extraordinarily haunting, exquisite melancholy elegance. Jones played No. 6 and No. 7 of the Canciones y Danzas (Songs and Dances). They lost some of their charm as a result of the emphasis on their rhythms at the expense of the songs. For his final work, Jones substituted Secrets from Mompou's Character Pieces, inplace of the scheduled Etude Op. 25, No. 10, of Chopin. Secrets, conceived in a dream, seemed here to be conceived in a very troublled dream indeed, if not a nightmare.
Victor G, Soukup, Nov 5, 2004
South African Piano Duo Opens New Challenging Performances Concert Season
The 2004-2005 season of Challenging Performances concerts
started on October 3rd with rousing performances of works for two pianos by
Brahms, Rachmaninov, and Ravel, played by the Westhuizen Piano Duo. They
are Pierre van der Westhuizen and Sophia Grobler, husband and wife.
Hailing from South Africa, they are in Cincinnati at CCM, working on doctorate
degrees. Singly each has won many honors in competitions throughout the
world and they demonstrated that they consider each other as equals by
exchanging the primary and secondary piano parts at the start of each work.
They began with Johannes Brahms (1883-1897), Variations on a
Theme of Josef Haydn, Op 56b, better known in its orchestral version. With
pause only long enough to acknowledge the warm applause of the audience, they
exchanged primary/ secondary piano roles, and launched into the two piano
version of one of the towering orchestral masterpieces of the 20th century, the
Symphonic Dances, Op. 45 of Sergei Rachmaninoff. The Westhuizens played the
first two movements of this longish three movement work. I was overwhelmed by
the performance. Not only was it rhythmically powerful but it managed to evoke
all the color inherent in the orchestral version. In retrospect, this
performance made me realize just exactly why the Westhuizens gained such praise
for their recent performances of the Bartok Sonata for Two Pianos and
Percussion.
Again without pause, they played Sites Auriculaires (1898) of Maurice
Ravel.
The recital was capped with a solid, incisive performance of La Valse, A
Choreographic Poem, also by Ravel. It would be hard to imagine a more idiomatic
performance. In contrast to the subdued dynamics they employed in Sites
Auriculaires, here the duo used the full dynamic range of the two piano
medium. It was sheer exhilaration.
Vic Soukup Oct 13, 2004
December 5, 2004
Violinist Kinga Augustyn is an accomplished artist now studying
at CCM for an advanced degree. Pianist Xavier de Beteta, in addition to
also being a skilled performer, has a degree in mathematics and was
contemplating working toward his doctorate in theoretical physics before music
finally won out. The two chose a program which enabled them to show off
their ensemble work and also to allow each to shine in solo performance. Together
they played three works by violinist/composers: Fritz Kreisler's
Liebesfreud, and Libeslied, and the Legend in g minor, Op. 17, of Henryk
Wienawski. The performance featured excellent ensemble and was quite remarkable
considering the short time the pair has been working together.
Mr. De Beteta played two of Chopin's best known Etudes from Op. 10, the Nos 3
and 12. He showed his considerable skills in dealing with their problems.
The performances were lovingly phrased and poetic.
Miss Augustyn played two movements (grave, and fugue) from the
solo violin sonata in a-minor of Johann S. Bach. Bach enriched the
repertoire of music for solo string instruments with the set of 6 suites for
cello and 6 for violin. Each set is almost unique in the breadth and
scope of the demands it makes on performers.
I come finally to Miss Augustyn's performance of two of Nicolo Paganini's Caprices, No. 13 and No. 24, Op 1, for solo violin, his first published work. If Bach's suites/sonatas are a compendium of what a first rate violinist of the mid 1700s should be able to play, Paganini's Caprices pretty much spell out what was expected from the very best by the mid 1800s. It is only some fifty years ago that Ruggiero Ricci made a splash with the first recording on 2 LP discs of the entire set. Violinists had rarely dared to perform them in entirety because they were so difficult. Miss Augustyn has made a specialty of the 24 Caprices, and has recorded them for a minor Eastern European label. Within their approximately one hour can be found all manners of expression, spiced with all known tricks, and then some of Paganini's own invention. Caprice No 24, with its intricate bowing, wide stretches and its left hand pizzicati is an absolute tour de force which fully demonstrated her prodigious technique. No 13, with far fewer technical demands, benefited from the warmth she breathed into it. All in all, this was a most attractive concert.
Victor G. Soukup Jan 1, 2005
