
The Pollini Project – Chopin, Debussy, Boulez
Royal Festival Hall
June 28, 2011
Fryderyk Chopin: 24 Preludes, Op. 28
Claude Debussy: from Préludes Book 1:
II Voiles
III Le vent dans la plaine
IV 'Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir'
VI Des pas sur le neige
VII Ce qu'a vu le vent d'ouest
X La cathédrale engloutie
Pierre Boulez: Piano Sonata No. 2
Maurizio Pollini, piano
This was originally intended to be the penultimate programme of Pollini's five-concert Project spanning the gamut of keyboard repertoire from Bach to Boulez (albeit with a large Classical Period-sized gap), but has been postponed for a couple of months due to illness. In my opinion this has made for a more fitting end to the series, not only following chronological order but also concluding by challenging the audience with something 'modern' rather than the obvious crowd-pleasing Chopin of what became the fourth Project concert. Appropriately, this concert in fact draws a connection, perhaps not immediately obvious, between the hugely different Chopin and Boulez. As maybe the first composer to make the sustaining pedal of vital importance in all his piano music, and one famed for the delicacy and sensitivity of his playing, Chopin is clearly an important precursor of Debussy's conception of the piano as 'an instrument without hammers'. In turn, Debussy's interest in timbre and non-functional harmony for their own sake can be seen as the start of the process of emancipation from diatonicism and structural norms that eventually led to Boulez's total serialism of all the individual elements of music, as might be surmised from his championing of Debussy in concert and on record.
Lion in winter. Concert audiences now whoop and whistle for their artists, and I couldn't help but wonder how this affects Maurizio Pollini. At sixty-nine, he has been before the public for fifty years, ever since winning the Chopin International Competition in 1960 at the age of eighteen. His white hair is wispy on top (this is art, so let's call it an aureole). He still walks briskly to the piano and hits the first keys with unnerving alacrity. When Rosa Ponselle made her London debut, the veteran diva Nellie Melba gave her a friendly warning: nothing but nothing could induce British audiences to give a standing ovation. Dame Nellie was reportedly quite put out when her young American rival earned a standing ovation at Covent Garden every night. Pollini earns the same, even when he ends his program, as he did last night, with Boulez's fearsome Piano Sonata no. 2. One way to insure that posterity will consider you a fool is to mock modern music, but in the annals of unapproachable and uningratiating works, the Boulez sonata must attain a kind of summa.
Tannery Pond Concerts
Sat., May 28th at 6 pm
Amerigo Trio (Glenn Dicterow, violin, Karen Dreyfus, viola, Inbal Segev, cello) with guest: Alon Goldstein, piano
Claude Debussy, Sonata for violin and piano in G minor
Ernst von Dohnányi, Serenade in C major, Op. 10
Johannes Brahms, Piano Quartet in G minor, Op. 25
This evening at Tannery Pond Concerts was outstanding because it was so fully awake. None of the musicians showed the least inclination to rely on traditional formulae, and performances like this can work wonders for any kind of concert-goer, the casual drop-in, as much as the dedicated music-lover, who has become a little to comfortable with traditional playing. It all culminated in an unforgettable reading of Brahms' much-loved Piano Quartet in G Minor, surely one of its greatest hours.
Feral fairies. Anyone afraid of a sugar overdose had nothing to worry about at the English National Opera's fiercely odd production of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream. This is a company that often traffics between radical and gimmicky, every once in a while being capable of acts of metamorphosis. In this case the director, Christopher Alden, seems to have taken his cue from the first sound we hear: slithery glissandos in the lower strings that introduce the fairy world not with whimsy and a twinkle but a wave of sea-sick nausea. In a daring move, the entire production metastasizes from the queasiness of that sound. The initial effect was to travesty Shakespeare's magical comedy — audience members who stalked up the aisle before the first act ended clearly didn't appreciate such high-handedness — but the music has never sounded so disturbing, or so convincing.
Shakespeare and Company's touring production of Hamlet was swift and sharp. It had something of the intransigence of youth about it. The focus was sharply on Katherine Abbruzzese's performance in the title role. All other roles were ably, nimbly taken by several actors who needed to be able to move quickly. This necessarily pushed the play toward melodrama. This was not bad. Ms. Abbruzzese was well-able to provide us with the energy and the virtuosity made necessary by the fleet, never-stopping direction. She seemed to be able to inhabit a world between genders without effort, like Hamlet seems to. This made me see Ophelia as more female than female, and that had a knife-edge tenderness. This made me see the graveyard reconciliation of Hamlet and Laertes as a lyrical event. What I missed most particularly were the Players. Hamlet the play is a slippery illusion, and the arrival of the Players paradoxically always makes me feel more grounded. I notice that Hamlet himself seems to feel the same way. The play makes us feel that the play's the thing—the thing that we can hang onto. On the up side, its absence only added to the straight-to-the-end momentum of the entire production. This was a Hamlet that moved like Macbeth. Ms. Abbruzzese did not belabor her private pronouncements to us; they were also compelled to dazzle. I found that they worked very well that way. I didn't have much time to think, and they seemed fresh, not separate from the main body of the play, just moments where it became more focused. This was a well-practiced performance with all the players connected in a simple and complete trust. The appreciative audience was well-pleased.
George Frideric Handel,
Acis and Galatea, 1718 Version
Jordan Hall
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Paul O'Dette and Stephen Stubbs, Musical Directors
Gilbert Blin, Stage Director
Anna Watkins, Costume Designer
Robert Mealy, Orchestra Leader
Kathleen Fay, Executive Producer
Abbie H. Katz, Associate Producer
Melinda Sullivan, Assistant to the Stage Director
Aaron Sheehan, Acis
Teresa Wakim, Galatea
Jason McStoots, Damon
Douglas Williams, Polyphemus
Michael Kelley, Coridon
Even before Handel's pastoral sinfonia was very far along, I found myself deeply immersed in the human activity I observed on the stage of Jordan Hall. Around the orchestra, who were dressed in unobtrusive modern black, some half dozen creatures of Queen Anne's day, or, more precisely, early Hanoverian days, busied themselves about a capacious drawing-room, until five of them came together to sing the opening chorus, "Oh the pleasure of the plains," evoking the landscape around Cannons. Actually they were looking into a pastoral landscape painting, its back to the audience. (At the end it was turned to reveal the composition.) While pictures were brought in and set on an easel for appreciation and perhaps purchase—the absence of a permanently hung gallery suggested that the house was not yet finished—two gentlemen at either end of the stage worked away at writing: one, Mr. Handel, was setting down notes, and the other—actually two, Mr. Gay and Mr. Pope—words. What was so absorbing about this was not so much the business itself, which is familiar enough even in early eighteenth century dress, but the mood.