Angela Hewitt Review

Angela Hewitt
Chicago Symphony Center
February 10, 2013. 3:00pm

Bach
•French Suite No. 6 in E Major, BWV 817
•Toccata in D Major, BWV 912

Debussy
•Pour le piano

Intermission

Bach
•French Suite No. 5 in G Major, BWV 816

Ravel
•Le tombeau de Couperin

Encore:
•Debussy: Claire de Lune

This evening was the third time I saw Angela Hewitt. I saw her once at the 2002 Gilmore Keyboard festival where she played the Bach Goldberg Variations. I saw her play them again in 2009 in Chicago and tonight I saw her play Bach, Debussy and Ravel. I was pleased.

She revealed and reveled in the same enchanting things I enjoy in her recordings and in her live performance: delicate care of phrases, outstanding clarity, tight and well chosen coloring and definitive climaxes. It was there. It was all there. Several times during the performance I thought to myself, "Screw editing, this could be recorded live and sent straight to disk, she sounds so polished!". About the only thing that detracted from her performance was her extravagant keyboard gestures.

The short of my observation is that I think she has gradually become more extravagant over the last 10 years. Now, while I excoriated another pianist for outlandish gesturing in another review, I don't denigrate Ms. Hewitt because to me, at that time, on that day, from where I was sitting, her antics didn't bother me. Perhaps it's because the character of her movements seemed to fit with her concert manner; Her entire demeanor coming to and from the piano was one of tremendous confidence, daresay regality, and there was something about her composure which, even though I found it amusing, afforded me the ability to forgive her the distraction.

About the only chink in her armor came at about the middle of the last movement on the program, during the Ravel Toccata; the tautness waned, and there was a subtle but undeniable weakening of her her playing. The change was so sudden and slight that I can only imagine that something which had nothing to do with her playing was at work–like a carbohydrate crash, or something.  When she finished the piece and I looked at her face, I could see that I wasn't the only person who was unpleasantly surprised. Alas, to err is human, and I'm glad I went.

Perhaps one day I'll figure out how to approach and comfort a performer after an unsatisfying (to them) performance. Maybe I'll figure it out while I'm waiting for a fourth opportunity to hear her.

Thoughts on the Pope's Resignation

Hello Reader,

In case you haven't heard, on Monday, February 11 2013, Pope Benedictus XVI announced that he will be resigning his position effective at the end of the month. Basically he says he doesn't have the physical and mental faculties necessary to carry out his responsibilities anymore. More info can be found here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/world/europe/pope-benedict-xvi-says-he-will-retire.html?smid=pl-share

and here:

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/356597/full-text-of-popes-resignation-letter

In 2010, for the first time in history, the catholic church made a statement about the sex scandals running amok internally. For the first (and only) statement ever made to address the problem, I was left feeling very unsatisfied. Even as a non-catholic, I found the response (in the form of this letter) conspicuously lacking in terms of punishment of known offenders or definitive calls to action. In honor of the resignation of the pope, I am reposting my 2010 response to the pope's address of the sex scandal(s) plaguing the church. Please, feel free to comment.

Pierre Miller

_________________________________________________________________________

This is my response to a friend asking what I meant when I said that the pope played politics in his letter to Irish Catholics abuse victims.

Here's how I see it: The pope had an opportunity to speak out to the world and promise stern punishment for those involved in the sex abuse problem running rampant all over the world. What did he do?

He targeted it to Irish Catholics. Dumb question: Why did he only address it to Ireland? This has been happening worldwide!

Secondly, what is worse (in my opinion): Was there any "This will not be tolerated, the guilty parties will be  rooted out and punished to the fullest extent of the laws in the countries where the crimes were committed?" No.

Mr. Ratzinger said everything in his power in that letter EXCEPT words to that effect. That is what I meant by "playing politics". I read that letter. I saw [the] pope walking onto the world stage carrying a palm full of empathy when every one of those families needed him to be carrying an iron fist. If I were catholic, I would definitely say that I don't feel safe with the way things are handled, and he DID NOT do anything that makes me feel any safer.

He took an opportunity to address to the entire world his position on a plague running rampant through his church, and what did he do? He protected his own. He gave a big fat "I'm sorry" to all the families that have suffered at the hands of "church leadership". To me, coming from potentially the most powerful man in the world, that's just plain not good enough.

Read the entire letter here.

The Pierre Miller Breakdown:

"For my part, considering the gravity of these offences, and the often inadequate response to them on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities in your country…"

(Which I could totally have stopped if I decided to put my foot in it and use my position as the [human] HEAD OF THE WHOLE CHURCH to put an end to this. Make no mistake, I knew about it before I came into office. The problem was raging on for nigh 40 years or so.)

"…I have decided to write this Pastoral Letter to express my closeness to you and to propose a path of healing, renewal and reparation."

Read: I still love you, but not enough to laicize the sick priests that work for me and send them to jail.

"Real progress has been made, yet much more remains to be done."

That is to say, I COULD make some [progress], but I'm not going to right now.

Section 6: "To the victims of abuse and their families"

This whole bit doesn't even need to be there. This is the section where everyone involved wanted to hear that these sick priests were to be thrown in jail and locked up forever. What does he do? He COMPARES US TO CHRIST, then preached a little sermon about Christ's experience. That is called passing the buck. He tried to pass our outrage into the shared experience of all Christians.

"Yet Christ’s own wounds, transformed by his redemptive sufferings, are the very means by which the power of evil is broken and we are reborn to life and hope."

So, XYZ boy being raped or molested at the hands of a pervert, told to lie about it, and then ignored when he confesses is like REDEMPTIVE SUFFERING? Wow, I had no idea.

"I pray that, by drawing nearer to Christ and by participating in the life of his Church…"

Oh, you mean the church you mentioned above that I am now terrified to enter? Okay.

" – a Church purified by penance and renewed in pastoral charity – "

Uh-huh. Purified? Really?

"you will come to rediscover Christ’s infinite love for each one of you. I am confident that in this way you will be able to find reconciliation, deep inner healing and peace."

Allow me to translate:

Rather than taking punitive action against the evil men who work for me, I offer you this advice: If you look hard enough into the deep well of love that is Jesus our Christ, you will be filled with beautiful feelings of hope and peace that will override all your pain, fear, mistrust and outrage IF AND ONLY IF:

You can summon the courage to  get your ass back through the door after being terrified out of it by those overzealous pederasts we mentioned earlier.

I don't know about you, but that sure feels like a slap in the face.Section 7. "To priests and religious who have abused children."

I looked really hard through those ten sentences for some mention of punishment or excommunication, or something, but all I got was a "You should be very sorry. Now, pray and go apologize please."

If I assaulted a 12 year old boy or girl, would I get that same sort of lenience and protection?

How might the parent of that 12 year old child feel, If all that happened to me was that I gave a (heartfelt) prayer and an "I'm sorry?" Relieved, huh? Thought so.

Louis Lortie Review

Louis Lortie
Chicago Symphony Center
January 20, 2013. 3:00pm

Wagner-Lortie
•Isolde's Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde

Wagner-Liszt
•Magic Fire Music from Die Walküre

Mozart-Liszt
•Réminiscences de Don Juan from Don Giovanni

Intermission

Wagner-Josef Rubinstein
•Siegfried Idyll

Wagner-Liszt
•Overture to Tannhäuser

Louis Lortie played a concert program that was almost exclusively transcriptions of works by Wagner. I went to the concert because I had never heard of Mr. Lortie, and I was curious about his playing, and I was also very intrigued by the choice of program. I don't listen to much Wagner, although I liked what of his I've heard. I figured that with Liszt transcriptions and mostly Wagner, the concert couldn't go wrong.
Fortunately, the concert was very much worth what I paid for the ticket ($15), but there's no way I'd go to hear that program again. Here's why:

The program was an interesting experiment, but I don't think the pieces which were collected were the best choices for this particular idea. I got the strong impression that Mr. Lortie wanted to do a Wagner-transcribed program, but he couldn't make it work somehow. I don't know the complete works of Wagner, so maybe this program was the best among the choices, but the famous Mozart-Liszt paraphrase was a one-off (the sole non-Wagner work) and felt too grand for the end of the first section. I say this because I looked at the program while he played and thought, "he's been playing for 40 minutes, and he's ending with this? There's no way he's playing a finishing piece that can top what he just did without the impression like he's trying too hard.” Perhaps I'm searching for too deep a meaning about work selection in concert programming, but I am at a loss as to why that piece was on the program at all and why it was in that particular location.
Mr. Lortie's skill at handling the piano was fine: he had very nice chromatic thirds, but I feel that he didn't project very much in the softer parts. He's not a pianist wanting in power, so I was conused. Wagner wants a muted sound sometimes, but I didn't get the impression in this performance that it was always intentional.

In that vein, many of the brilliant passages from the transcriptions came off as clear, but not dazzling. They were bright but not shiny, if that makes any sense. Oh, and his playing was accompanied with plenty of hand tosses where his left arm fully extended into the air in the widest arc one could make while seated, and his eyebrows got a little out of control in the Tannheuser.

Another possible explanation why the concert failed to make a strong impression (besides his choice if pieces) lies in the idea itself of doing an all Wagner-transcribed program. Wagner's music is highly orchestral, and very heavily rooted in the different timbres of the orchestra. Wagner, a true visionary in this regard, thought of the sound for the instruments, checked his ideas on the piano and then wrote it for the instruments. He did not, however, write his musical thoughts out on piano first and then orchestrate it like many other composers of the time. On piano, where we're painting in black and white, so to speak, one can suggest at colors, but it's very difficult to play music like this convincingly.

This brings up another point which contributed to the overall impression of the concert. Wagner heavily relies upon the use of temporal space in time to achieve his effects. I think a significant part of the Wagner experience is having the surround the listener and carrying him to distant lands over great temporal expanses. Wagner gives you the impression that you're immersed in a part of an epic dram. He called his operas “music dramas”, and they take place on the broad time scale (almost in real time), and he calls upon all the instruments he writes for to yearn and to draw out long, sinuous lines and statements in tireless rhapsody. Wagner never did "brief". This is the problem.

The best piano in the world can't sustain tones the way Wagner demands, and throughout about 90% of the program, Mr. Lortie's attempts at elucidating the concept of spaciousness or breadth in his music came off making the piano sound insufficient. Fundamentally, the piano is taxed pasts its limits in this kind of music, and in Lortie's hands the effect was of the music falling flat. Sadly, this was nowhere more true than in the first five minutes of the first piece. For me, it was the first and biggest letdown of the entire concert. He took a chance and it fell flat.

In the Wagner-Wolf, in extended left hand melodic moments, what his playing lacked in nuance he made up in gesticulation, forced smiles and effete shimmy shakes. I don't mind a bit of movement in performances, but I did not like his non-playing movements in that piece or either of the closing works in the program's two halves. In addition to giving the impression that he ejaculated a little at the close of the Wagner-Wolf, he frequently used the hold-the-keys-down-in-the-chord-and-bob-your-wrists-up-and-down-move. We keyboard players refer to this move as "bebung". It's when you hold key(s) down and wiggle them to cause the hammer to rub against the string giving an additional vibrato. It exists only on clavichord (where it is a fine effect), but it can not be done on any well regulated piano. It simply is not possible, and as such, is patent affectation. When I see moves like this done, I have two thoughts: It's insulting to watch for people who do know what it is you're doing, and it's confusing and absurd for the people who don't.

Daniil Trifonov Review

Daniil Trifonov
Bennett-Gordon Hall, Ravinia
August 19, 2012. 6:30pm

Scriabin
•Sonata 3, Op. 23

Medtner
•Fairy Tale in A minor, Op. 51/2
•Fairy Tale in E flat major, Op. 26/1
•Fairy Tale in B flat minor, Op. 26/2

Stravinsky-Agosti
•Three Dances from The Firebird

Intermission

Debussy
•Images, Book 1

Chopin
•12 Etudes, Op. 25

Encores
•Chopin: Etude in C major, op. 10/1
•Chopin: Etude in A minor, op. 10/2
•Chopin: Etude in E major, op. 10/3
•Strauss-Trifonov: Overture to Die Fledermaus

The concert on that evening was sold out. Rather, almost sold out. I was told that there were under 10 seats left at the box office. I don't know how the majority of people there found out about Mr. Trifonov, but my first experience was watching him play the opus 10 Chopin Etudes during the Chicago Piano Day at the CSO's Symphony Center. In that first performance, since there was no program, I thought he was just going to play a handful of varied selections, but it wasn't until he got to around Op. 10/5 that I realized, “oh man, he's going to play them all”. Things I noticed during that performance included original approaches to phrasing, a natural “I play this passage the way that is most relaxed and comfortable to my hand” approach to the technical demands, and a polish that says “every moment here can be phrased this way or that to be made beautiful,” it was a polish that said “I won't just take the easy approach and leave the piece's projection to simply bringing out the melody.” I came away from that performance wanting to hear Mr. Trifonov again.

This concert at Ravinia was almost everything I had hoped for. Almost.

Things I want to hear in a concert are:
1. Interesting programming
2. Strong musicianship from the performers
3. Honesty, integrity, maturity, and a pleasant concert manner

The Scriabin sonata had a full scope of colors as well as many different colors of agitation, if that makes sense. If I had to describe them, I'd say sometimes tumultuous, sometimes murky, other times tempestuous, seismic in other places, and rippling often came to mind. I loved it. I know enough to know that it's only because of Scriabin's writing that those shades of shading are possible, but I also know it takes a sensitive, diligent artist not to steamroll over all those subtleties and actually make such nuances heard.

I didn't like his take on the rhythm of the opening of the sonata. (I've played that piece, so I know what Scriabin wrote on the page.) A lot of people like to take exaggerations of his notated rhythms, and as a composer and as a scrupulous performer, I take offense to that. Mr. Trifonov wasn't the first person to take a dotted-eighth-followed-by-a-sixteenth rhythm and morph it into a series of quarters and crushed apoggiaturas and I'm sure he won't be the last, but he did it on the very first note . Granted, some people might justify that, calling it part of the volando effect for which Scriabin is well known, but I wasn't excited that the first note he played in his recital was a distortion.

His Medtner was technically sound, soulful and suitably volatile when the music called for it. Rhapsody, repose and restrained pathos were all there, and he deserves our thanks for his performance of those pieces.

The Stravinsky-Agosty was fun. I think they were a bit flamboyant and overblown, and they struck me as a very puerile effort to get an audience to jump to their feet. The first one was very intense and impressive, and was what one might call hyperdramatic. The Berceuse was pleasant, but forgettable. The last one was an amusing romp that made me want to laugh out loud. The movement wasn't funny per se, it was just such a dramatic contrast to the serious music making of earlier that the bathos left me with no option but to laugh. Roger Ebert once said that the only thing Mel Brooks didn't do to make us laugh in Blazing Saddles was hit us over the head with a rubber chicken. For me, this over-the-top hedonism was like rubber chicken rain.

His Debussy had the veiled quality that a lot of Debussy playing aspires to, and he gave us our share of muted colors, but I felt his interpretation was lacking in bright colors. I'm not going to call Debussy an impressionist composer, but I know he wanted his music to have variety. Maybe Mr. Trifonov didn't think the music ever got “bright” very much and that's why he never let it become so, but after the three pieces of the suite, I was left feeling a wanting for something. This was especially apparent in the first piece, Reflections in the Water.

In the Chopin etudes, the final section of the concert, I saw outstanding interpretations all the way up until number six, the etude in double thirds in G sharp minor. Until then, his playing was incisive, clear, and extremely accurate with regards to pitches and rhythms. In the etude in thirds, he took the tempo too fast or something, because his thirds weren't clean. That's what the etude is for, and it wasn't there.

I was looking forward to C sharp minor etude; The ending is a taxing test of a person's musicianship, and it has a breathtaking close. His rendering was beautifully proportioned, but when he got to the end, Chopin's anaphora fell flat in his hands.

The G flat etude was delightfully played, full of fire and jubilation. The octave etude that came after it was par.

The Winter Wind etude was fine, but he rushed through the ending and finished with a sloppy scale and a weird, sloppy release of the pedal that made you think he had completely lost control of his faculties. Then he played the C minor etude as though he forgot to give every measure four beats. Through the last 70% of the piece he consistently chopped a little bit off the end of each measure, starting each successive measure ahead of the beat.

I'm sure someone thinks that's exciting, but I found it wearisome, tacky, and a bad surprise. From the moment I first saw him and throughout most of the recital, I thought he was sincere and serious about serious music making. In the last half of those Chopin etudes it seems that he just tossed all that integrity to the wind in favor of generating excitement through the use of cheap tricks. Anyone can do that. Anyone can rush to “create excitement”. Anyone can make ostentatious errors to simulate in-the-heat-of-the-moment “spontaneity”. That's not hard. I expected more of this young man.

In his first encore, he was better. He was back to his earlier good form. In the second (perhaps the hardest of all the etudes) he did what he did in the etude in thirds, he took it too fast, and gave a version of how the right hand was supposed to go. The third etude was melodious and much better–although at this point my attention was changing to concern that he had just played through 15 Chopin etudes, and I was worried that he still had 9 more!

His fourth encore (his own transcription, sadly) can only be described as loud, long and jejune.

I came away from the performance with a mixture of satisfaction and disappointment. He got a standing ovation and played four encores. He would have played more–we could see the stage door open temporarily for him to come back out, and then close again–but he didn't. The stage got rushed by a handful of women (some bearing flowers) who wanted programs signed, and when he came out into the lobby, the crowd of people waiting there can only be described as a mob. Mr. Trifonov whipped that audience into a frenzy that night. From my point of view, based on his program selections and his performances, he did it by catering to the basest human instinct: our love and fear of danger; teetering himself between of failure and success, order and disarray, the people that night got to see a player on the brink of disaster, and they saw him make it out alive. I saw a young man who danced near the edge, while playing it safe. Then I saw that young man fill in the gap with artifice to distract us from the fact that he was playing it safe.

What I don't like is that his antics of the last part of the concert (Chopin etude 6 and beyond) make me question all of his prior performance. Was he being insincere the whole time? Were those beautiful Medtner pieces just a group of artful lies? Could he really have been an honest player then, at that point and then chosen to turn on his Charlatan Button when the time was right? I suppose there can be many competing motives and desires within an artist, and maybe that's what we saw. Maybe this is immaturity manifest, and this is how talented young people are–scrupulous and studious except for when they're being impulsive, careless and brash.

So, how does he score on my three points?

1. 9.5/10
2. For the first half of the concert, up until Op. 25/6, 9.5/10. For the rest of the concert, 5.
3. I have no idea. Can someone be inconsistently sincere? Or consistently insincere?
I don't know what will happen to this young man over the years. I'll watch him again to see what he does. I shouldn't have any problem though, Ravinia will hire him back. They'd be fools not to.

Richard Goode Review

Richard Goode, piano
CSO Symphony Center
March 4, 2012

Schumann
•Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood), Op. 15

Brahms
•Seven Fantasies, Op. 116

Intermission

Chopin
•Nocturne in E flat, Op. 55/2
•Scherzo in C sharp minor, Op. 39
•Waltz in A flat, Op. 64/3
•Waltz in C sharp minor, Op. 64/2
•Waltz in F, Op. 34/3
•Ballade in A flat, Op. 47


I jumped at the opportunity to see Richard Goode at Symphony Center when I first heard he would be playing back before the beginning of the 2011-2012 season. But recently, when I saw that he wasn't going to be playing any Beethoven on the program for last Sunday's concert, I was a little disappointed. I don't think I need to bore anyone on here with Richard Goode's history with Beethoven, but I will say that he is part of the echelon of pianists who have performed and recorded all 32 Beethoven sonatas, and a few years ago when he was doing clinics at Northwestern, I saw his master class of Beethoven opus 109, and I was satisfied with what he brought.

The first time I heard him play that piece, I would describe his playing as a bit rough hewn–he handled the broad strokes of piano technique, but the superfine precision and resolute clarity in the minutia of intricate passagework wasn't as present as it is in many of the performers currently on the stage. Nonetheless, since Beethoven presents some of the most challenging musical problems in the piano repertoire, and I found his interpretations of Beethoven compelling, I obtained a ticket for his recital perforce, irrespective of his inclusion of Beethoven in his programming.

The Schumann Kinderszenen were beautifully performed. Goode's phrasing in these pieces was very very good. His sense of timing in moving from one piece to the next was well balanced, and though many of the pieces in this set are at slow or moderate speeds, the few fast ones were executed with wonderful clarity in the difficult parts. 

I heard him play these Brahms pieces when he was back at Northwestern in 2008, and I was not disappointed here. Again, there was vigor, boldness, tenderness and a lot of dark, strong colors in his playing–in short, exactly what I want these Brahms pieces to sound like.

His Chopin group was good, but in most terms, I've heard better; in spots, the nocturne didn't have enough dynamic space between the layers to sound cohesive, so it gave the impression of being cluttered, and he rushed the climaxes instead of letting us (his audience) luxuriate in them. Save the sonatas, the ballades and scherzi were some of the biggest pieces of Chopin's output for solo piano, and for a big piece at the end of his program, the A flat ballade didn't sound nearly epic enough; there was hardly any scope. The waltzes were played nicely, but there wasn't any "flutter" in them at all. Don't get me wrong, this is world class playing, but he didn't capture the lightness in these pieces that I think they want. 

Interesting, in some of the most musically demanding repertoire, Goode is among the best of the best, but his Chopin waltzes still came off as earthbound.

Lastly, (and ironically for this review), he didn't end with the C sharp minor scherzo, the only piece that showed any obvious instrumental display. It was big, dashing, and had an opportunity to show off one's octaves (in my experience, octaves are always a crowd pleaser), but he sandwiched it between a 3 waltzes and a nocturne. It may have been a noble experiment in terms of programming, but it didn't work for me; it left the end of the program, with the waltzes and the Ballade, feeling like a monument to anticlimax.

While I'm at it, I think I can say that though the first half of the concert was lovely to listen to, I grew tired of the series of miniatures Goode served up. It was like the concert was composed of two first-halves of two concerts. When we returned from intermission, the only thing we had to greet us was a handful of Chopin miniatures. I don't know why he chose to program a concert like this–almost all short pieces, and the few more extended works ordered in such a way as to give a sense of incompleteness. 

Perhaps for a renown Beethoven interpreter who established himself as a master of the largest of forms, this was his way to show us that he could master the short and delightful aspects of music as well as the serious and epic. Maybe he just wanted to play these pieces because he liked them, and thought he'd try something different from the usual concert programming standard. 

As an aside, Ruth Slenczynska, a musician of towering importance, once advised that a program can be composed of many shorter pieces, but that one should avoid putting too many familiar, sure-fire pieces on a program or the audience will become bored, like I did; a mixture is best. He showed us lots of beautiful sound and a variety of moods in his choices, but for what it's worth, when I come to see a concert at Symphony Center, I'm not alone in expecting to be impressed. Granted, those octaves in the Scherzo were nice but they were brief. I don't want a concert composed exclusively of fire and brimstone pieces, but I want some–a little spice in what I go to hear. He brought many flavors, but the music never got "hot" so to speak. 

Enough conjecture, I'll leave you with the obligatory play on words with the man's last name: In short, Goode was good, but his programming wasn't. 

p.s. Oh, while I'm at it, I have a question: What could a person be hoping to accomplish by putting this up as their publicity photo? This was an insert advertising to Meet Richard Goode after the concert. I can only imagine he didn't want anyone to show up.

Dmitry Mayboroda Review

Dmitry Mayboroda, Piano
Bennett-Gordon Hall, Ravinia
September 7, 2011

All-Rachmaninoff Program:

•Prelude in C-sharp Minor, Op. 3 No. 2
(Preludes Op. 23)
•No. 5 in G Minor
•No. 4 in D Major
•No. 2 in B-flat Major
•No. 6 in E-flat Major

Preludes Op. 32
•No. 10 in B Minor
•No. 12 in G-sharp Minor
•No. 13 in D-flat Major

Moments musicaux Op. 16
•No. 4 in E Minor
•No. 5 in D-flat Major
•No. 6 in C Major

Intermission

Kreisler-Rachmaninoff 
•Liebesfreud (Love’s Joy)
•Liebesleid (Love’s Sorrow)

Mendelssohn-Rachmaninoff 
•Scherzo from A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Rachmaninoff 
•Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor, Op. 36

Encores:
•Rachmaninoff: Prelude in G, 32/5
•Rachmaninoff: Polka de Vassily Rachmaninoff

Probably the best overall description I can give about my thoughts on this concert as a whole can be summed up with an anecdote about the middle part of the G minor prelude. 
If you look at the score, you see a pleasant melody in octaves in the right hand, and a gently inflected rolling bass line in the left, looping up and down like hills. Most pianists take this middle part simply as the "middle section" of the piece, and content themselves with a perfunctory rendering of the overall shape: melody, and rolling accompaniment, steamrolling those inflections into nonentity in the process. 

Well, you're interested in going one better than that, you can balance the parts well so that you can hear the soft, rolling accompaniment, the octave melody come in over it, and finally those inflection points poking through in the middle. That's a good way of letting the music speak for itself. 

However, it is possible to go through that very process, but figure out HOW the melody and the rolling bass relate to those inflections, and then tailor their parts so that when the inflections do come in, they sound like an outgrowth of everything that came before. In a rich piece of music, there are typically a few ways in which that might be done, and when one chooses to do so, it gives the impression of the artist making a STATEMENT.

This happened all night long.

The person sitting next to me during the concert asked me what I thought of his technique. I thought for a bit, and said that I believed his technique to be par. While he obviously can play and shape the notes in all of these pieces–either by choice, or by limitation, I can't presume to know which–there remain others who can outdo him technically. One can't hear Gavrilov play the octaves and chords at the end of the B flat prelude and not be somewhat expectant when a new pianist comes up and plays that piece; Mayboroda was very good, but I've heard dynamite elsewhere. Clearly, Mayboroda could handle the octaves in the G minor prelude, but they didn't come etched out like bullets like Matsuev does. My one complaint of the evening is that the Mendelssohn didn't sound as "spritely" as it should. Granted, even a pianist of great stature like Garrick Ohlsson was quoted in an interview as stating that particular piece has "so many notes in it!", so we can forgive Mr. Mayboroda for somewhat succumbing to the extreme density of texture a little bit.

The good news through all of this is that I don't think it matters in the least. 

That Wednesday evening, Mr. Mayboroda made it abundantly clear that he was focused on bringing out the small details and the inner voices in Rachmaninoff's music. Sure, his scales were clean, and his details were well-defined, but I could tell that that wasn't his focus. It was as if he said, "Now, the technique for XYZ passage is very good, and that is sufficient. Now I can focus on these things." And went on to concentrate on the arc of the performance through the two halves of the program, and sculpting his sound to be what he wanted. As the concert went on, overall his tone subtly but ceaselessly shifted from a more melody focused sound (one that one would stereotypically expect to hear in Chopin playing) to a richer, darker, more full blooded one. A classic example was the Moment Musical in C (a piece I think can stand to be forgotten): he brought out details in the writing of that piece I've never heard anyone do before. Most pianists just kind of let the volume and the texture (I've read that this piece has more notes per second than anything else Rachmaninoff ever wrote) speak for itself, but in Mayboroda's hands, we hear shapely, charming, chromatic melodic lines. Granted, they were repetitive and supernumerary charming, shapely melodic lines, but they were there. Mayboroda took the trouble to take Rachmaninoff's music and make something out of it. 

Eldar Nebolsin Review

Eldar Nebolsin, piano
Bennett-Gordon Hall
Sunday, September 4, 2011. 6:00pm.

Program

Schubert
•Sonata in A, D. 664

Beethoven
•Sonata in E flat, Op. 7

Intermission

Schubert-Liszt
•"Das Wandern", "Wohin", "Der Muller und der Bach"

Beethoven-Liszt
•An die ferne Geliebte

Liszt
•Totentanz (solo piano version)

Well, this is going to be one of "those" reviews.

When I write a review of a performance, I try to strive for something constructive; I think the perfect review is entertaining, informative and comprehensible to the prospective listener while at the same time remaining constructive and meaningful as as critique for the performer. If I had to sit down with Mr. Nebolsin and tell him what I thought of his performance, the conversation might go something like this:

Eldar Nebolsin: What did you think of my performance?
Pierre Miller: Well, it was certainly technically capable.
EN: That's all?
PM: Well, it was.
EN: If you had to sum it up in a word?
PM: In a single word? Affected.
EN: Really?
PM: Yes, the exposition of the first movement of the Beethoven sonata came with a good deal of chin wagging, and in the fourth movement, every hand crossing came with its own cutesy facial expression. I didn't see the Schubert sonata, but in the transcriptions, every time the music expressed humor, you brought everything to a full stop and made a cheesy grin. Fortunately, the rest of your Liszt was just as histrionic as it should be. To be honest, it's been a long time since I've seen anyone swivel, gyrate, gesticulate and pivot on their heel that much while sitting down who wasn't four years old.
EN: In two words?
PM: Incompletely polished. The Beethoven sonata was well played, but in the slow, emotional core of the sonata, you didn't let the music breathe enough. You tried to give it some breadth, but you only projected an incomplete sense of repose, which gave us the impression that the music was tired, but wasn't sleeping well. In the last two of the Schubert-Liszt pieces, your phrasing was nothing but virile statements: strong openings, strong closes–even in the weeping, sinuous lines of The Miller and the Brook, you took music that was weeping and tried to make it sound heroic. (And, not in a Cuba Gooding Jr. "strong and powerful through the tears" sort of way.) In the Beethoven-Liszt, you had your first really great emotional moment, but I don't think anybody noticed because it happened in the middle of a thick stack of boring, unknown, homogenous-sounding pieces. The bland harmony was irritating enough without having to hear you sight-read it and work out what you wanted to do with your touch. That reminds me of two other words I would use to describe your program.
EN: What's that?
PM: Oddly programmed. The Liszt transcriptions of An die fern Geliebte? Those were not forgotten masterworks. Nobody cares about them! Perhaps you knew that the music couldn't stand on its own without the benefit of text. This might explain why you distracted us by swirling around like a top. You intentionally made the last half of the program all Liszt–surely, Liszt wrote better things!
EN: What was the best part of the concert?
PM: I like that you took off your coat and untucked your shirt before you played the Totentanz. You played it well, and I liked the way you rewrote the ending. You ended the concert with a very good bang, and it earned you a standing ovation. However, it was kind of awkward the way you kept squeezing out encores even though the audience had almost completely stopped clapping and was packing up. Gauge us next time.