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Mikhail Pletnev gave a phenomenal
solo recital at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center on
October 13 despite two particularly adverse circumstances.
One of them is Avery Fisher Hall. Perhaps when the planned
reconstruction is completed, the space will be acoustically
more congenial to performances, especially solo
recitals. The latest plans call for beginning work in 2009,
but since the renovations may cost in excess of$300 million,
the latest plans may well be replaced by new plans, which
threatens to delay the improvements to the hall even
further.
The second distraction happened when the concert was
supposed to begin. A gaggle of formally dressed men and
women filed into the hall and, instead of proceeding to
their seats, they stood in the aisles, chatting and
laughing. They were patrons coming from an official dinner
in the lobby celebrating the opening of the season. Several
times the audience clapped rhythmically to remind the merry
socialites that the main event of the night was a concert,
not after-dinner socializing. When Pletnev came out on the
stage at twenty minutes past the appointed time, there were
still a few couples chattering in the aisles.
It is not often at a major concert venue that one sees a
pianist already sitting at the piano while some listeners
next to the stage still remain standing. And then, when they
did scurry to their seats after the first few measures
played by Pletnev, the hall was filled with muted
conversations, incessant coughing, and sundry electronic
tunes performed by cell phones.
I have heard some excellent speakers delivering speeches
under unfavorable circumstances. There are two rather
opposite taming strategies used by experienced orators:
one, more obvious, is to crank up the volume of
delivery. The other, more difficult, is to lower the volume
while conveying something extremely important, forcing
listeners to crane their necks and hush their neighbors.
The opening piece of the program, Bach's Partita in E minor,
does not contain any thunderous chords to overcome the din
in the hall. So Pletnev chose to whisper, and it ultimately
worked, despite the introverted complexity and the length
(about thirty-five minutes with all the repeats) of the
Partita. No other pianist today can fine-craft every tiny
detail, produce so many timbres in simultaneous contrasts,
and fill every phrase with expression and sensitivity
rivaling the best singers. And he can do it at any
tempo, volume, or texture.
Pletnev enhanced the polyphonic intricacies of the Partita
by finding additional hidden melodic lines within lines, by
subtly highlighting different phrases in different voices,
so that no repeated section sounded as it did the first
time. Especially striking were the dizzying rhythmic whirls
of the Corrente, the plaintive simplicity of the Air, and
the immense sadness of the Sarabande. To my regret, Pletnev
did not add melodic ornamentations in the repeats-not
just extra trills and mordents but melodic embellishments
that skilled harpsichordists (e.g., Igor Kipnis) and
fortepianists (e.g., Malcolm Bilson in Mozart) play. But
then, pianists practically never embellish repeats in
eighteenth-century music which, in my opinion, is a loss. It
would be fascinating to hear how Pletnev, with his
remarkable talent for composition and improvisation, could
melodically ornament the repeats.
The entire program of the evening was devoted to the three
Bs: Bach, Brahms, and Beethoven. The two works by Brahms
were the well-known Intermezzos in B minor, Op. 119, No. 1,
and B-flat minor, Op. 117, No. 2. The Intermezzos continued
the contrapuntal sophistication of the Partita, but in
entirely new tone colors. Crystalline notes with
diamond-sharp edges were replaced by veiled, often
mysterious sonorities and softly rolling chords. The last
piece before the intermission was Brahms's early Scherzo in
E-flat minor, Op. 4, written almost forty years before Op.
117. It is a rarely heard work, perhaps deservedly so. I do
not think that anyone could play it better than Pletnev, but
even he could not quite redeem the piece,
notwithstanding his inexhaustible, impish playfulness and
bravura allure.
In the second part of the program, Beethoven's G-major
Sonata, Op. 14, No. 2, sparkled with wit, lovely sentiment,
and contagious energy. The performance of the C-major
Sonata, Op. 53 ("Waldstein"), was nothing short of
miraculous. An intellectual depth was combined with
pianistic wizardry, and the results were astounding and
deeply moving. The tempo flexed in a most natural manner,
highlighting important aspects of the form, harmony, and
rhetorical discourse. The melodies soared on top of gently
cascading passages. But for me the most miraculous moment of
Pletnev's craftsmanship came when, in the Prestissimo coda
of the "Waldstein" finale, he played right-hand octave
glissandi.
I could write a few paragraphs about these improbable
glissandi that were carried out with infinite delicacy and
perfectly refined inflections. Instead, I would like to
address a review of this concert that appeared in The New
York Times on October 15. The reviewer was very
perplexed by Pletnev's "constantly shifting tempos." In
his words, "the intensity in certain climactic passages of
the "Waldstein" is surely meant to be achieved by keeping
the buildup of fortissimo chords absolutely steady." The
reviewer blamed Pletnev's rubato on the Russian Romantic
tradition. This is a misconception based on a lack of
knowledge. True, Russian pianists of the past, such as
Rachmaninov and Horowitz (the two pianists most revered by
Pletnev) used a lot of tempo rubato. But the freedom of
tempo was not an exclusive trait of the Russian piano
school. Thus, Anton Schindler left a detailed description of
Beethoven's own performance of the first movement of Op. 14,
No.1-the same Sonata that featured in Pletnev's program.
Beethoven's tempi were far from steady. At certain moments
Beethoven slowed the tempo down to andantino or even
andante, then he resumed the original tempo; accelerando and
ritardando were liberally applied.
Carl Czerny, Beethoven's student and Liszt's teacher, did
write that "every composition must be played in tempo
prescribed by the composer and adhered to by the
performer." But then he meticulously listed rules for tempo
changes. For example, according to Czerny, one could retard
to underline a return of a melody, or to separate musical
phrases, or on long notes, or after a pause, or in a
transition to a different tempo, or in a diminuendo, or in a
crescendo, or in section endings, or in expressive passages,
or in places where the performer "gives free rein to his
fancy" (that is to say, anywhere). As Czerny said, "in
almost every line of music there are certain notes and
passages where a little ritardando or accelerando is
necessary to beautify the reading and to augment the
interest."
The Times reviewer could have easily found most of
this information in the excellent book of the former New
York Times music critic Harold S. Schonberg The Great
Pianists: From Mozart to the Present. Schonberg warned
in his book that if a pianist today would try to play
Beethoven in a true Beethoven manner, he would be "laughed
off the stage as an incompetent, a stylistic idiot who knew
nothing about the Beethoven style, and as a bungler who was
incapable of adhering to a basic tempo." Schonberg's warning
unfortunately turned out to be somewhat correct in the case
of his younger colleague. The truth of the matter is that
Pletnev's adroit tempo fluctuations greatly enhanced both
the form and expressivity of the music he performed, just as
they were supposed to do.
Anatole Leikin is Professor of Music at University of
California, Santa Cruz. His articles have appeared in
various musicological journals and essay collections; he has
recorded piano music of Chopin and Scriabin. Professor
Leikin also serves as an editor for The Complete Chopin - A
New Critical Edition (Peters Edition London). |
