September 19, 2009: A density of notes

Last night's piano recital by Joel Fan in the Old First Concerts series at Old First Church offered a somewhat unconventional combination of composers in an equally unconventional order.  The major work before the intermission was Elliott Carter's only piano sonata (first completed in 1946 and then revised in 1982), preceded by the third piano sonata in A minor, Opus 28, which Sergei Prokofiev began in 1907 but only completed in 1917, after his move from Russia to Paris.  The second half of the program also concluded with a piano sonata, this time Frédéric Chopin's second in B-flat minor, Opus 35 (best known as the "Funeral March"), preceded by William Bolcom's "Nine New Bagatelles."  If these composers have anything in common, it would probably be their capacity for writing high-density streams of notes;  and, in a recital of approximately 100 minutes (including the intermission), Fan may have set a record for average number of notes played per minute.

He certainly had the technical chops for the demands of this music.  Furthermore, now that all the celebrations for Carter's hundredth birthday have passed, performances of his music are as hard to encounter as they used to be.  However, I am not sure that Fan was able to get past the challenges of dexterity and capture the features that earn this sonata a more significant place in the recital repertoire.  Most important is that, even in this early period, Carter was already experimenting with new ways to work with time.  He also was clearly interested in the sonority of the piano itself, particularly in his exploitation of sympathetic vibration as a means of sustaining sounds.  At the highest level of architecture, that sense of sonority serves the primary motif that pervades the entire sonata, which evokes the tolling of bells, presumably to honor those who fell in the Second World War.  Fan explained some (but not all) of this through introductory remarks;  but ultimately all that came through was his gift for maintaining control over the flood of notes that Carter had summoned.  In that respect the performance was not that different from the Prokofiev performance that preceded it, except that Prokofiev's logic was compressed into a single continuous movement.  Similarly, the Chopin reading was all about technical proficiency, which was certainly impressive but never got at the music behind the technique, so to speak.  Thus, his command of the gradual crescendo in the funeral march movement was impeccable;  but the resulting roar from the piano seemed at cross-purposes with the funereal intent, rather than in support of it.

In the presence of such monuments, the Bolcom bagatelles were short but fascinating.  Fan reviewed their cloying titles (which really should have been included in the program) for the audience, giving each a brief explanation.  These works also imposed some significant technical demands, but Fan seemed more at home tapping into the personal quality each one conveyed.  At the end of the evening, this was the experience that left me hungry for a second listening.

Fan offered two encores, both of which seem to have come from his new West of the Sun CD.  I was most interested in the first of these encores, a dance setting by the Brazilian composer Ernesto Nazareth.  I was first exposed to Nazareth because Darius Milhaud had appropriated some of his "hits" for his "Cinéma-Symphonie sur des Airs Sud-Américains," "Le Bœuf sur le Toit."  Since I am currently working on Milhaud's four-hand version of his score with a neighbor, I am more curious about his source material;  and Fan's selection of Nazareth for an encore did much for my curiosity.