Pianist Barbara Nissman Plays Brahms
by
Lyn Bronson
[This review will appear in the Salinas Californian on Monday,
October15, 2007.]
On Saturday night the Monterey Symphony launched its new
season at Sherwood Hall in Salinas, and as is his custom at the beginning of the
season, Maestro Max Bragado-Darman and the orchestra brought the audience to its
feet for a rousing rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner.” To hear it so
magnificently performed is a moving event, especially in these troubled times
when we need to be reminded that the finer core American values remain something
of which we all can still be proud.
Pianist Barbara Nissman, making her debut appearance with
the Monterey Symphony, was on hand to perform the Brahms Second Piano Concerto.
Pianist Emanuel Ax once stated in an interview that although he had been playing
the Brahms Second Concerto for forty years, it never becomes any easier to
perform. Its difficulties are legendary,
as are the ingenious solutions to its many technical problems shared among music
students (and also seasoned pianists) the world over. In this Titanic work it is
ultimately the struggle to get past its awesome difficulties in order to reveal
its majestic profundity that is the essential goal of any performance. And on
this occasion we were a witness to the mighty effort by Ms. Nissman to give this
work her all. Although it was not a perfect performance, no live performance
ever is compared to the almost inhuman perfection attainable in a recording
studio where a three-hour recording session produces an average of five to ten
minutes of usable music, and where modern digital editing can correct even the
tiniest error. Thus, it was Ms. Nissman’s valiant effort and partial success
that was most impressive. Her outgoing personality was evident in her
performance, for her approach to this work was not the mellow understated
approach of an artist like Dame Myra Hess, but more like the aggressive
extroverted and abandoned playing of the legendary Anton Rubinstein.
Also on the evening’s program were Beethoven’s Leonore
Overture No. 1 and Schubert’s “Tragic” Symphony No. 4 in C Minor giving us
another opportunity to hear how very fine our symphony players can sound.
