The world's best pianist?

It’s been months since I wrote a review, which makes sense since it’s been a while since I attended a concert meriting a review. But I am back! I recently gorged on pianists, or at least piano performances, seeing four within 3 weeks. Since piano was my first instrument, I always feel a bit thrilled, a bit nostalgic, and a bit anxious when I attend these, since they evoke nerve-wracking moments when I was 11, waiting in my teacher’s bedroom to go out into her living room to play for the discerning audience of parents.

There was one standout among these four performances, that of the 80 year-old Georgian-Russian pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja. I have not heard a better recital in decades. 

She was unknown to me, but should not be. Her recital was a gripping, old-school demonstration of classic Russian piano technique and musicianship, and was the best concert I have been to for several years. I loved her programming. In the first half she alternated bracing, dance-like Mozart with  the ultra-rich late romantic Alban Berg Sonata op 1. (1908).  Berg studied under Schoenberg at the time he wrote this, and its easy to see why Schoenberg felt that romanticism had run its course in listening to this piece. It was a bit long, and thick, akin to Zemlinsky. There were dramatic moments, but the sonata mostly seemed to have harmony that was just too clotted. The second calf was anchored by the Schubert A minor sonata D. 845 (1825). I was unfamiliar with this late sonata, as it is less played than the 3 last three. Similar to these, D. 845 is long (40 minutes) and requires major artistry to maintain energy and forward motion. Leonskaja did this in spades. She lives in Vienna, and there were often wonderful dancelike interludes that sparkled within this performance, contrasting with more chordal passages. There were many remarkable moments, but one that stood out was the last variation in the second movement Andante, in which the melody, usually buried in an inner voice within relentless 16^th note triplets was crystal clear in this performance. To set off the rich Schubert main course, she preceded it with the 12-tone, mildly acerbic Variations op. 27 by 12-tone composer Anton Webern. It was the perfect palate cleanser for the Schubert. The two encores were short, evocative pieces by Debussy, a lovely ending to a substantial concert.

Leonskaja trained under and performed with the great Sviatoslav Richter in Russia at the Moscow Conservatory, and this influence showed. Like Richter (also Horowitz, Rubenstein), Leonskaja plays majestically with a steady, almost motionless torso (no lifting off, rocking, or writhing), but uses dramatic hand and arms to add excitement. In particular, she often withdraws her hands to her lap at the end of a section within a movement, providing a visual architecture for the audience. Superb. I will seek out this pianist when she performs in the future, and so should you if she comes to your area.

The other three pianists, while more familiar to me, were less exciting. Both Japanese pianist Mitsuko Uchida and Russian Arkadi Volodos also featured big, late Schubert sonata performances, but were not as successful at maintaining interest as was Leonskaja. Uchida (b. 1948) played the Sonata D. 894 in G major (1826) in a much more restrained style, and my mind sometimes wandered. Actually, her whole recital (Beethoven’s early Variations on an Original theme, Webern Variations op. 21, Mozart D minor Fantasia) seemed have a gauzy scrim over it, not allowing much musical excitement to emerge. I guess you could say this was “refined”, but I found it mostly underpowered.

Russian Arkadi Volodos (b. 1972) is much younger than Leonskaja and Uchida. He got his start winning piano competitions and doing his own arrangements and improvisations, rather excitingly as I recall from past encounters. This program was striking similar to the ones reviewed above, even featuring the very same Schubert sonata as Uchida (D.894), albeit played with a bit more energy. But there was not quite enough structural “glue” to hold the sonata together in the way Leonskaja or, say, Benjamin Grosvenor can. The rest of the program was a bit low key, featuring restrained Chopin mazurkas and the second Chopin sonata (B flat minor, Op. 35). This is much less flashy than the first sonata, so is played less. But it features the Most Famous Funeral March in the World

followed by a wild ending--dissonant, fast, all in octaves, which I have always associated with the dead person’s soul arising into the ether. 

The sonata was well played (esp the march), but the recital overall lacked a little zip, odd for a pianist who started as a flashy Russian virtuoso type.

Least successful of these performances was the the Chopin F minor Piano Concerto #2, op. 21 played by Argentinian Ingrid Fliter (b. 1973) with the Gulbenkian Orchestra. Ms. Fliter’s passagework was over-pedaled, and her rubato (the pull and tug of the tempo characteristic of Chopin) was unconvincing. Worse, there was little dance-like feel to the buoyant triple-time finale. The concerto has Chopin’s typical lack of interesting orchestration (eg the winds rarely get anything interesting to do), and it requires a great pianist to make it work. This was not the case here. There was one moment of orchestral innovation, however, when the strings were asked in the finale to play percussively col legno (with the back of their bows). This is a special effect common in  later composers, but still rare in 1830.  The more famous example, composed in the same year, was by Berlioz in the  Symphonie Fantastique, during the Witches’ Sabbath. The rest of the concert featured the orchestral Lutoslawski Variations for Orchestra (1954), a sort of Polish version of the Bartok version composed 11 years earlier, but not nearly as rhythmic and energetic, or as creative in use of the different orchestral instruments. The Gulbenkian Orchestra is young, and plays consistently well, but often lacks that last bit of virtuosity to make one truly excited. This is often because the hired conductors (here the 37 year-old Nuno Coelho) often don’t bring much that is new or creative to the podium. This concert was just OK, but at least improved on the Gulbenkian’s recent Mahler Fifth Symphony. Here Maestro Karl-Heinz Steffens, a renowned clarinettist (eg Berlin Philharmonic) who now conducts throughout Europe, brought sluggish tempos and undifferentiated articulation to this titanic piece, and somehow made it uninteresting, which I did not think was possible.  

Misc. Cultural Notes

1. I normally do not pay attention to physical attributes of conductors, but Maestro Coelho was perhaps the shortest male I have ever seen conduct. Who cares, you say? Fritz Reiner was under 5'6" and was a titan. Well, when the piano lid went up for the Chopin Concerto, Coelho was entirely hidden from the audience. So some clapped after the slow movement, since they could not see his gestures (and because the pianist was not very clear.) This experience made me reflect about conductorial altitude. I think that, like CEOs, there is an ongoing bias towards tall men as conductors.

2. The most interesting moment of the sluggish Mahler 5 occurred when, in the finale, a loud chord coincided with colorful birds ascending outside the big picture window that bounds the back of the orchestra in the Gulbenkian Auditorium. The window is marvelous, allowing the audience to see the beautiful Gulbenkian gardens as a backdrop to many performances. Mahler would have liked that!