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Vladimir Feltsman, Piano
At Carnegie Hall
Stern Auditorium
www.carnegiehall.org
Frank Daykin
October 30, 2005
Vladimir Feltsman is an artist of immense range and insight, recognized as one of the most imaginative and constantly interesting musicians of our time. A regular guest soloist with every leading orchestra in the United States, Mr. Feltsman appears on the most prestigious concert series and music festivals worldwide. Sharing the great tradition of piano playing has become increasingly important to Mr. Feltsman, who holds the Distinguished Chair of Professor of Piano at the State University of New York, New Paltz, and teaches at the Mannes College of Music in New York City. Mr. Feltsman’s extensive discography (from Bach to Messiaen) has been released on the Sony Classical, Musical Heritage Society, Urtext labels, and Camerata Tokyo. (Program Notes).
Program:
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Piano Sonata No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 13, “Grande Sonate Pathétique” (1798/99) I. Grave-Allegro di molto e con brio, II. Adagio cantabile, III. Rondo: Allegro.
Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 31 in A Flat Major, Op. 110, (1821) I. Moderato cantabile molto espressivo, II. Allegro molto, III. Adagio ma non troppo-Fuga: Allegro ma non troppo.
Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881): Pictures at an Exhibition (1874) I. Promenade, II. Gnomus, III. Promenade, IV. Il Vecchio Castello, V. Promenade, VI. Tuileries (Children Quarreling After Play), VII. Bydlo, VIII. Promenade, IX. Ballet of the Chicks in Their Shells, X. Two Polish Jews, One Rich, the Other Poor (Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle), XI. Limoges, The Market Place, XII. Catacombae (Sepulcrum Romanum), XIII. Con Mortuis in Lingua Mortua, XIV. The Hut on Fowl’s Legs (Baba Yaga), XV. The Great Gate of Kiev.
Pianist Vladimir Feltsman presented a powerful recital of Beethoven and Mussorgsky in Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium on Sunday afternoon. Since his arrival in the United States, as a Soviet émigré in the 1980s, he has developed a devoted American following. What he offers, besides the thoroughness of old-school Russian piano technique, is a passionate personalization of every note he plays. Though there are thousands of intricate details that might be analyzed, none of them sounds stale, over-rehearsed, or preconceived. He transmits the living drama of the work in that moment.
That approach lent a refreshing “romanticism” to his playing of the early, too well-known, Beethoven sonata called “Pathétique.” It was obvious from the first chord that this was to be no scaled-back evocation of early-piano sound. Feltsman even showed that the seemingly impossible “fp” (loud followed by suddenly soft) marking on the first thick chord can be achieved, even on the modern Steinway, with a superb control of hand rebound and pedaling.
The sonata, which is almost impossible to hear freshly, was revealed with as much of the original radical quality as one could imagine. Breathing space in the allegro movements allowed them to sound unrushed, and a stateliness and lack of sentimental swooning brought the slow movement to noble life.
All this augured well for the second Beethoven sonata, from the other end of Beethoven’s creative life. One can view the 32 sonatas as a kind of miraculous diary of the creative soul of Beethoven. They were only circulated among privileged members of the nobility and a few professional students for study. They were never heard in public concerts until well after Beethoven’s death, yet what personal visions and sorrows they contain.
The A Flat Major Sonata, Op. 110, is a journey from friendly optimism and songfulness, through the vulgar rough humor of the scherzo, a recitative (a musical gesture borrowed from vocal music) of fragmented emotion, the “Klagender Gesang” (Lamenting Song), which is then countered by a healing fugue that seeks to restore order, but is interrupted by the Lamenting Song again, this time a half-step lower, in the “wrong” key of G Minor broken by sighing and sobbing rests, and then the fugue in inversion (whatever the lament was about, the emotional world depicted had become topsy-turvy) which patiently heals again, leading to the triumphant conclusion. The progression from dark to light was a favorite musical trope of Beethoven.
Here, Feltsman’s color range was at its most bewitching, with meltingly soft colors, “con amabilità” (lovably) as Beethoven indicates. He enveloped the entire sonata within one framing color, and then found thousands of variations within that. His depiction of the “weary lament” (the wrong-key second version) was sensitive. At the end of the final fugue, as the arpeggios climb higher and higher, soaring to the final chord, he flew up, completely off the bench, culminating in a gesture both vivid and apt.
After intermission, Feltsman turned to the single large piano work of his countryman, Mussorgsky: “Pictures at an Exhibition.” The concept of the work: a composer/narrator walks through an exhibit of paintings, has never been imitated. The scenes were inspired by the visual art of Mussorgsky’s friend Victor Hartmann, who had died suddenly in 1874 at age 39. All the pictures in Mussorgsky’s exhibition, however, were never seen in one place, even at the memorial show of Hartmann’s work. Some were only known to the composer privately.
Feltsman made his first and only ugly piano tone of the afternoon in the single notes that announce the very first “Promenade” theme. Perhaps he was letting some tension go, in anticipation of the 30-minute pianistic marathon that awaited him. The music is a relentless encyclopedia of difficult physical tasks for the player, all of which must be absorbed into strongly characterized imagistic playing.
From the grotesque gnome-shaped nutcracker, to a solitary tiny troubadour playing in front of an immense castle, lighthearted childhood squabbles, the rumbling of a Polish ox-cart, stylized chicks in their shells, two cantankerous Poles, arguing women, frightening visions of skulls and witches’ rides, and the triumphal (never-executed) gate designed for the city of Kiev, Feltsman captured it all with technique and imagination to spare, particularly in the thundering sections, which had that authentic Russian roar.
The audience leaped to its feet in an instant standing ovation, in recognition of the heroic and inspired playing they had just received. Feltsman responded by rendering the Schumann/Liszt “Widmung” song transcription in lovely lyrical style as an encore.
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