Pianist Neiman Impresses!
by
Lyn Bronson
Pianist Adam Neiman
showed his colors as a sensitive and expressive artist last night as soloist in
the Chopin E Minor Concerto with the Santa Cruz Symphony.
This concerto has a long history of being exploited for its virtuoso
qualities, as can be heard in brilliant (but aggressive) historic performances
by such artists as Gyorgy Sandor, Alexis Weissenberg, Martha Argerich, and more
recently Yundi Li, the darling of
young Chinese pianists all over the world (there are reportedly over 60 million
of them in mainland China alone). I don’t mean to imply that Neiman is not a
virtuoso, since for him technical difficulties do not seem to exist. However,
his performance last night gave preference to beauty of phrase, beauty of tone,
and beauty of passages, which in other hands can sound like a series of Chopin
Etudes.
In the concerto’s
first movement, we heard a limpid tenderness in the slow themes, which often
employed a lingering rubato to splendid effect. In the concerto’s second
movement, Romance, once again the
expressive qualities reigned supreme, and the lovely passage at the end of the
movement where the pianist decorates the principal theme in the orchestra with a
descending passage of legato chromatic sixths was supremely effective.
There was, of course, also plenty of virtuosity, although it was always
subordinated to the music itself. The development section of the first movement
just purred along with the technical difficulties falling by the wayside. The
exciting final Rondo movement also zipped along at the speed of light, but
always exuded plenty of charm.
As always, the
orchestration of this concerto is problematical. Although it is well known that
Chopin worshipped Mozart, he seemed to have learned little about Mozart’s
effective use of orchestration in the genre of the piano concerto, and
accordingly the orchestration in Chopin’s E Minor Concerto often tends to get in
the way of the music. It also needs to be said, that in Chopin’s time the
orchestra accompanying this concerto most probably consisted of eight to fifteen
players, or Chopin sometimes simply played the orchestral tuttis himself – a
practice virtually all pianists adopt today in performing the
Andante Spianato et
Grand Polonaise Brilliant,
Op. 22. However, the orchestra
accompanying Mr. Neiman on this occasion consisted of almost forty strings, and
a full complement of woodwinds and brass – in other words, a full orchestra, and
not even a reduced orchestra such as we often hear in Mozart concerto
performances.
Maestro John Larry
Granger opened the concert with the brief Mozart “The Impresario Overture,”
which made a charming effect. The other
major work on the program, Dvořák’s Symphony No.
7 in D Minor brought the evening to a rousing close. As always, it is the
third movement Scherzo of this symphony that makes the most powerful impression,
but in this performance the Finale was no slouch either.
There was a memorable moment at the end of the second movement,
Poco adagio, where the orchestra’s
long drawn out diminuendo was so effective that I found myself holding my
breath. Adam Neiman was not the only
artist on the program who can spin some expressive magic, as Maestro Granger so
effectively proved.
