As I have observed
on my blog, in attending too many piano recitals, one runs the risk of
getting so saturated with the music of Ludwig van Beethoven and Frédéric
Chopin that one begins to wonder how any pianist can find a compelling
path to a performance that is still fundamentally accountable "to the music itself." At today's Noontime Concerts™
recital at Old St. Mary's Cathedral, pianist Chia-Lin Yang offered an
excellent antidote to "Beethoven-Chopin burnout" with performances that
not only recognized how Beethoven and Chopin spoke in different voices
but also honored each composer's capacity for speaking in multiple
voices in a single composition. She made this clear by beginning her
recital with Beethoven's WoO 80 set of 32 variations on a C minor theme
that is almost little more than a phrase. This work, which usually runs
less than ten minutes in duration, was composed in the same year that
Beethoven published his third ("Eroica") symphony (Opus 55), whose final
movement runs rampant through variations over an equally simple theme
in the course of only a slightly longer duration. Both approaches to
variation exemplify what I mean by "speaking in multiple voices in a
single composition." It is as if multiple personalities are picking at a
tune, each twisting it in a different direction, almost as a foretaste
of what we now expect from high-quality jazz improvisation.
Whether by intuition or by design, Yang was clued in to the multiple
personalities of the piano variations, offering a performance in which,
within a crowded diversity, each spoke with the clarity of its own
voice.
In the case of Chopin's Opus 22, his "Andante spianato
and Grande Polonaise brilliante," the contrast of the two movements is
immediately evident; but the polonaise goes through its own set of
"personality shifts," as is the case with other polonaises that Chopin
composed. While the polonaise is of folk (Polish) origin, Grove Music
Online observes that it gradually migrated into appropriate music for
grand occasions. This is how we encounter it at the beginning of the
final act of Pyotr Tchaikovsky's Eugene Oneigin; and, closer to home, the Wikipedia entry
cites the "Presidential Polonaise," which John Philip Sousa wrote at
the request of Chester A. Arthur for a receiving line at the White
House. Chopin, however, was not one to be confined by a context of
ceremonies of state; and his polonaises could be as introspective as
his nocturnes (but with a stronger beat). Again, Yang was sensitive to
the mood shifts of this introspective process, offering a multi-faceted
account of the composer's character in place of social grandeur.
To "mediate" between Beethoven and Chopin, Yang performed Maurice Ravel's 1910 five-movement suite, Ma Mère l'Oie
(Mother Goose), composed as a two-piano duet for Mimi and Jean Godebski
when they were, respectively, six and seven years old. Katia and Marielle Labèque
performed the final movement of this suite as an encore the last time
they appeared with the San Francisco Symphony, but Yang performed a solo
piano transcription prepared by Ravel's friend Jacques Charlot.
Each movement is based on a fairy tale (rather than a nursery rhyme);
and in 1912 Ravel expanded it into an orchestral ballet score. In this
case each fairy tale speaks with its own voice, so once again Yang's
performance was one in which her piano spoke in a diversity of voices.
Following the Chopin, Yang programmed her own encore (so to speak) by concluding with three movements from Ravel's suite Le Tombeau de Couperin
in its piano version. The movements were the Prelude, Rigaudon, and
Toccata, the third of which was omitted from the orchestral version of
this suite. Musically, these works have about as much to do with
Couperin as Leopold Stokowski's orchestrations of Johann Sebastian Bach
have to do with their source material; but Ravel's piano
virtuosity is evident throughout his suite, particularly in the dazzling
Toccata, bringing an impressive ending to an imaginatively conceived
program.
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