July 6, 2009: Doing justice to both Liszt and Brahms

In the preparation of concert programs Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms rarely make good partners.  As I have observed on my blog, Brahms had a "tendency to invoke the adjective 'Lisztich' when talking about excessive bad taste," perhaps insinuating that Liszt was never more than an "entertainer" in the pejorative sense of that word explored by SF Classical Music Examiner Scott Foglesong on Saturday.  Brahms was also the target of some rather vicious adjectives.  The novelist Romain Rolland, in the first volume of his Jean-Christophe trilogy, even turned Brahms' invented adjective on its head:

There are "Brahmins" who think to find in their God the breath of old men of genius:  they love Beethoven in Brahms.

Thus, it is rare to find a pianist with a repertoire that gives a "fair shake" to both Liszt and Brahms.

Tien Hsieh is such a pianist.  In a Noontime Concerts™ recital she gave two years ago, she explored several of Liszt's many approaches to transcription, as well as the first of his "Mephisto" waltzes.  This summer she is on the faculty of the InterHarmony International Music Festival;  and, in the first Faculty Chamber Music Concert yesterday afternoon, she gave a very "fair shake" indeed to Brahms, while continuing her pursuit of the Liszt repertoire.  That pursuit included a continuing interest in his transcriptions, this time focusing on songs including one of Franz Schubert ("Der Müller und der Bach," from Die Schöne Müllerin) and two by Robert Schumann ("Frülingsnacht" from Liederkreis and "Widmung").  This was followed by Liszt's "Rhapsodie Espagnole;"  and, if one ever wanted to make a case for Liszt-as-entertainer, this would provide excellent evidence.  Liszt composed it in 1845 while touring Spain (although it was not published until 1863);  and, as I wrote on my blog the last time I heard it performed, he "was clearly making a play for local appeal."  He thus subjected two "local favorites," "La Folía" (the theme that Sergei Rachmaninoff mistakenly attributed to Arcangelo Corelli) and "Jota Aragonesa," to the usual "Liszt treatment" of (really) extended flamboyant embellishment, just the sort of thing to get the audience to leap to its feet in hysterical applause and cheers.

Hsieh is not as flamboyant as Liszt, but her delivery is solid.  She has a clear sense of the difference between the embellishing and the embellished, so she can honor all of Liszt's elaborate excursions without losing sight of the point of departure for each of them.  She also deals admirably with his radical shifts in dynamics, thus getting all of the musical expression out of the piano that Liszt probably intended without giving any attention to any excessive display of physical show.  In short, she approaches the keyboard with a psychological disposition that can give as much justice to Brahms as to Liszt.

Her Brahms selection was his first piano quartet (Opus 25), for which she was joined by faculty members David Yonan (violin), Claudia Lasareff-Mironoff (viola), and Misha Quint (cello).  While Brahms probably gave little thought to mass audience appeal while composing this work, he still revealed a few of his own ways of going over the top, even if any thoughts of entertainment never reached beyond the performers themselves.  The middle section of his ternary-form andante movement turns out to be a parade, which approaches from a distance but eventually overwhelms the ear with its march rhythm.  However, this jolt is nothing compared to the "alla Zingarese" concluding rondo, which may be the closest Brahms ever came to orgiastic impressions.  This is wild music, and the members of the quartet threw themselves into it with all of the abandon that its spirit demands.

In this program of opposition of Liszt and Brahms, the only real loser was Ludwig van Beethoven.  The performance of his Opus 70, Number 1 ("Ghost") piano trio by violinist Shirley Givens, cellist Harry Wimmer, and pianist Eduard Laurel was incoherent and, in too many passages, just plain out of tune.  It may be that these performers had inadequate time to rehearse, but it was too apparent that they were never seriously listening to each other.  Given the impetuous energy of the first movement, the evocative sonorities of the second, and yet another taste of Beethoven's wit in the third, this is a composition that deserved a much better performance, particularly for an audience consisting heavily of students just beginning to learn to listen to Beethoven.

Somewhat less in the shadows was Hsieh's performance of the San Francisco Premiere of a 2008 elegy for solo piano by Glen Cortese.  In many respects this was a composition in the spirit of the seven elegies composed by Ferruccio Busoni (entry 249 in Jürgen Kindermann's catalog).  However, there is also a strong sense of that "American sound" that Nadia Boulanger cultivated in so many of her American students during much of the twentieth century.  Hsieh approached this music with the same energy and respect she had given to Liszt and Brahms, but it felt somewhat out of place.  I would certainly be interested in hearing more of Cortese's work, but it may require a more conducive setting than that of yesterday's concert.