Arnaldo Cohen Triumphs
by
Lyn Bronson
Sometimes members of a concert
audience dutifully sit and listen, convinced they are part of a cultural elite
with a responsibility to support the fast diminishing genre of serious classical
music. Sometimes they hear routine performances by world famous artists, but
still try to convince themselves that their support is meaningful. Even though
some concerts are unexciting and unmoving, they politely applaud and return year
after year to support serious music. Attending concerts can become a duty, like
attending church regularly every Sunday.
And then sometimes, along comes
a performer who walks out on stage and so charms and electrifies the audience
that at the end of a concert the excited buzz you hear from people leaving the
hall after the concert is a reflection of what just happened on stage — that the
event was not a duty fulfilled, but an artistically satisfying event that will
long remain in the memory.
Such an event occurred last
night as the Carmel Music Society presented in a return engagement the
extraordinary Brazilian pianist Arnaldo Cohen. Not only did we hear an excited
buzz after the concert was over, but we also heard the same buzz in the lobby
during intermission. Mr. Cohen is like an entertaining docent in an art gallery
who can lead you to a masterpiece and through a brilliant lecture help you see
it through his eyes with a totally new perspective. After an introductory pair
of charming, but relatively unknown and seldom heard pieces by Villa-Lobos, we
were treated to several masterpieces on his recital program last night, the
Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel and the four Scherzi by Chopin, and in
each Cohen gave us fascinating new insights.
Someone once said that a
dramatic masterpiece is a work that is greater on the page than can ever be
realized in performance. The Brahms-Handel Variations is just such a work, for
its musical and technical demands are so great that it is nearly impossible to
achieve anything approaching a perfect performance. A few years ago Cohen’s
recorded performance of this work on CD was praised by New York Times critic,
Harold C. Schonberg as the greatest recording of this work in recent memory.
Last night his live performance achieved a spontaneity and vitality that went
way beyond the controlled intensity of his studio recorded performance. Cohen is
a born performer who responds to an audience and acknowledges that its presence
is a vital part of the performing experience. His performance of the
Brahms-Handel Variations was full of interesting stylistic and emotional
contrasts. He alternately thundered, whispered, cajoled, charmed and even, at
times, assaulted our sensibilities with a large scaled conception of this work
with its culmination in one of the great nineteenth-century fugues. By any
standard this was a whale of a performance!
The second half of the program
was devoted to the Four Scherzi by Chopin. Cohen announced from the stage he
would be performing, for musical reasons, in a different order from which they
were composed. Accordingly, rather than hearing them in the usual order of 1, 2,
3, and 4, we heard them in the order of 4, 1, 3, and 2. Although he probably
chose to end the group with Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor because it is the most
popular, it has to be said that it was his performance of the Scherzo No. 3 in
C-sharp minor that was absolutely the most successful of the four. Last night we
heard such a staggeringly powerful performance with such boldness and
spontaneity, that it would be difficult to imagine it played any better. This
was a performance that left Rubinstein, Horowitz, Richter, Gilels, and every
other legendary pianist in its dust. Scherzo No. 1 in B minor, took off at a
hair-raising prestissimo and ended with the chromatic scale, not played
as unisons between the hands, but as interlocking octaves that roared up the
keyboard to an explosive finale. Especially moving in this performance was the
lovely hushed middle section based on the Polish song, “Sleep, Baby Jesus,” that
achieved an especially lovely mood in its final reprise just before the
prestissimo resumed. It was magical. The remaining two Scherzi, numbers 2 &
4, had many moments of thrilling excitement, although excessive speed sometimes
blurred the clarity and reduced their effectiveness.
Audience response was loud and
enthusiastic. Not only was there an instantly spontaneous standing ovation, but
we also heard from this normally sedate audience some stamping of feet and
boisterous whistling. Cohen looked visibly tired, but graciously rewarded us
with two delicious encores. The first was his tongue in cheek rendition of
Chopin’s “Minute Waltz” played at breakneck speed, achieving a new world’s
record at 1 minute 17 seconds (normally it is well over two minutes), but still
absolutely clear, totally musical and totally charming. The last encore was
Ernesto Nazareth’s “Odeon,” a beguiling piece that received a beguiling
performance.
It was a happy and smiling
audience that left Sunset Center last night.
