[
The Murray Perahia recital at Stanford University took place at exactly the same time as pianist Dubravka Tomsic's appearance with the Monterey Symphony. Therefore, Erik Dyar agreed to step in as a guest critic for the event. Mr. Dyar, although an architect by profession is an accomplished pianist and played a solo recital in Carmel, California earlier this year.]
Those people fortunate enough to be present to hear a recital by pianist Murray Perahia at Memorial Auditorium on the Stanford University Campus Sunday afternoon, were treated to a rare and richly satisfying musical experience. Setting the mood for the main work to come, the concert began with four Bach-Busoni Chorale Prelude transcriptions
Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 645, Nun komm der Heiden Heiland, BWV 659, Nun freut euch, lieben Christen, BWV 734, Ich ruf' zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 639, after which Mr. Perahia performed Bach's great keyboard masterpiece, the Goldberg Variations.
Truly epic in its scope, the Goldberg Variations covers a vast array of human emotions and musical ideas. This great work consists of a simple aria followed by 30 variations, ending with a
da capo restatement of this same aria at the work's conclusion. In the time it takes to play it (well over an hour), the listener and musician are taken on a journey through many different musical styles and moods, moving towards a transcendent climax - a true musical apotheosis, and ending with a coming home to the sublime air which began it all.
To fully enhance the majesty of this masterwork takes an extraordinary amount of energy, focus, and technical mastery, as well as emotional and intellectual depth. Mr. Perahia accomplished this beautifully on Sunday afternoon. He was able to hold the listener's attention in each variation with amazing clarity, articulation and color as he produced an abundance of beautiful sounds and highlighted many intricate details in the score. At the same time, he was able to reveal the monumental musical architecture of the piece.
Toward the end of the Goldberg Variations, Mr. Perahia brought home the power of this work and created an ending that was especially moving. In Variation 25, we heard a pause in this plaintive, and almost improvisatory music. In the liner notes from his recently issued CD of this work, Perahia describes this variation, programmatically, as the musical expression of the crucifixion of Christ. This moment of time suspended separates us from the rest of the piece and prepares us for what could be described as the coda - the push to the climax. Programmatically again, Mr. Perahia interprets the last set of variations as expressions of the Resurrection. He begins Variation 26, after the quiet Variation 25, with a passage played pianissimo, coming out of the silence, ascending higher and higher with corresponding crescendo. This effect was stunning in its power and eloquence. The final variation, the
Quodlibet, resolves this progression to the climax. Then, the work returns to the most sublime of themes, the opening aria, to bring the music, the journey, full circle to conclusion. No encore could be given to so satisfying an ending, and none was, despite the boisterous, standing ovation given by the capacity audience.
Mr. Perahia has always been recognized for the lyricism, color, and clarity of articulation that he brings to the everything he plays. In his early career he did not record or perform very much Bach (we suspect, however, that he always studied it and played it for himself). Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, and Schumann remained the staples of his repertoire, and he is certainly acknowledged as one of the great Mozart interpreters of our time. In this recorded repertoire, he displayed all the above qualities, which serve him so well in his Bach playing.
Even in the high Romantic warhorses, such as the Hungarian Rhapsody No.12 by Liszt on his Aldeburgh Recital CD, he brings an amazing clarity to the Romantic literature that was a fresh approach to works often considered more suited to the great Russian pianists. Mr. Perahia began focusing on Baroque keyboard music when recovering from a serious injury to his thumb that sidelined him from the concert stage for more than a few years in the 1990's. With his release of a recording of Handel Keyboard Suites and Scarlatti Sonatas in 1997, which revealed a sound both extraordinary and unique (and miles away from the coarseness of Glenn Gould's playing), we had to wonder why he had neglected this musical style period for so long.
He has, in the last couple years, released his first Bach recordings. His recording of the English Suites won a Grammy Award for best classical solo instrumental performance in 1999. Now, with the imminent release of his recording of the Goldberg Variations, those not so lucky to have been in Memorial Auditorium on Sunday will have a chance to hear the culmination of his work in the Baroque repertoire. If the recording is anything like this recital, you will hear a great artist, at the height of his powers, realizing one of the great masterworks of piano literature - a rare treat, indeed.
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