Pianist Michael Roll - Playing in the Grand Manner
by
Lyn Bronson
Pianist Michael Roll
made a powerful impression at Sunset Center last night. Born in London of
Viennese parents, his playing revealed a British refinement mixed with a
reverence for the Germanic classics from Beethoven and Schumann to Richard
Strauss. Not to seem too top heavy with the Austro-Germanic composers, he also
demonstrated a flair for Chopin.
The three
Stimmungsbilder (“Mood Paintings”) by
Richard Strauss were a total surprise, for few pianists today perform (or even
are aware of) his early solo keyboard works. The three pieces,
Träumerei (Reverie),
Intermezzo and
An einsamer Quelle (At the Lonely
Spring), turned out to be charming miniatures in Strauss’s early post romantic
Schumanesque style that anticipate characteristics appearing more fully in his
later songs. In the Intermezzo we
even heard capricious foreshadowing s of
Till Eulenspiegel, and in An einsamer
Quelle there were hints of Wagner and even the songs of Rachmaninoff. Roll
played these pieces with subtle and refined colors and injected each with a
sense of beauty. This simply was gorgeous piano playing and masterful music
making.
One of the two major
works on the program was Schumann’s
Kreisleriana, in which Roll once again demonstrated his mastery. This is one
of the most difficult of Schumann’s works to make coherent for an audience,
partly because its extended 35-minute length (that’s three minutes longer than
Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony) can be quite taxing. Roll projected considerable
magic in the slower sections and blazed his way with confident virtuosity
through the more technically difficult (and musically complex) challenges facing
the performer. Especially magical was the
enigmatic ending where the two hands are deliberately out of sync and diminish
in sound to evaporate mysteriously off into the ether.
The other major work
on the program was Beethoven’s “Appassionata” sonata, and Roll gave it an
impassioned, extroverted performance. Beethoven composed this great work for the
instruments available to him at the time, however in 1803 pianos were
frustratingly weak and Beethoven was constantly aware of their inadequacies. We
can surmise that Beethoven would have approved of the glorious sound of the
Carmel Music Society’s Hamburg concert grand and the sonorities it presented,
the richness of which he could hardly have imagined. Roll’s sensitive
performance of the slow movement was lovely and mesmerizing. Although his larger
than life playing of the two outer movements sometimes threatened to overwhelm
the resources of the Hamburg Steinway in the climaxes, it also achieved dramatic
and compelling results. His playing of the coda of the last movement was
fabulous for its lightness and clarity, and the way it achieved a powerful
cumulative effect at its end.
Chopin was represented
on the program by three selections: the Impromptu in A-flat major, the Nocturne
in F major, Op. 15, No. 1, and the ever popular
Fantasie-Impromptu.
Although once again we heard masterful playing from Roll, we would have
to say that his playing of Chopin seemed a charming old-fashioned throwback to
an earlier time when artists tended to bring out inner voices and linger here
and there in exaggerated rubato expressiveness that threatened the forward flow
of the music.We can only guess that Roll has been playing these Chopin pieces
for fifty years and is looking for ways to make them fresh again by discovering
something new not heard previously. Well, he did discover some new wrinkles,
although I am not sure they enhanced the music.
After a standing
ovation, Roll played one encore, and since this concert was presented by the
Carmel Music Society in its Mozart Series, it is not surprising that his encore
was, of all things, Mozart. It was the Fantasie in D minor, K.397 in a lovely
and expressive Romantic performance that made a fine effect. Following the
concert the audience was invited to a splendid reception (courtesy of Carmel
Music Society board member Victoria Davis) in the lobby of Sunset Center.
