Liszt Bicentennial Bash? Bravo!
Franz Liszt
First, a little history:
While plausible arguments can be made that Wagner’s “Tristan chord” provided the seed for much of twentieth-century music, a great deal of credit for the germination and planting of that seed must go to Wagner’s father-in-law, Franz Liszt. Liszt’s accumulation of technique encompassed nearly the entire range of physical possibilities on the (then new) modern piano. Couple that with a lush, driving sense of melody, and the musical equivalent of Byron’s wild Romanticism, and it’s not hard to understand why women tore Liszt’s tossed hankies to shreds after performances. The man was one of the first true international pop stars.
His life and (more importantly for us…) his compositions embody this maelstrom of technique and musicality with precision and abandon melded as one; the first Zen koan of the Neudeutsche Schule. Technically demanding, they sparkle with effervescence while obscuring neither structure nor style. And when played with intelligence, this supreme effort sounds effortless.
Linking this to Tuesday’s Piccolo “Young Artist Series” performance, the teaching lineage of series director Enrique Gra himself stretches back through Leon Fleisher and Artur Schnabel to Theodor Leschetizky, a contemporary of Liszt who, like Liszt in Weimar, created a conservatory in Vienna.
And on to the show!
Edoardo Carpenedo opened our program with Feux follets, one of the most technically challenging of the Transcendental Études. This mixture of lightning quick runs and wide intervals moves through several climaxes before drifting away somewhat abruptly. A brave choice as an opener, to be sure! Edoardo approached this work with a light hand and quite precise technique. Even so, all of the wonders of those chromatic runs sounded somewhat delicate and dry, only hinting at their mysterious nature. Precision is only Liszt’s grammar. A very passable, and beautiful, performance of an extremely difficult work, but lacking in capital ‘R’ Romanticism.
Edoardo Carpenedo
La leggierezza, the second of Liszt’s Three Concert Études, came next finding Micah McLaurin at the keyboard. He drew a brilliantly round tone, coupled with a fruitfully aggressive attack which instantly captured the audience’s attention. Now comes the answer to the koan! The ubiquitous runs fell in florid sheets of joyous pain while our melody rang out in light. Amazing! I urge anyone with an interest in piano music to hear as much of this young man’s playing as possible.
The next three works served as the heart of our program, and quite possibly the scoop of the series. Diego Suarez, who matriculated at CofC this past January presented us with the Nocturne in A-Flat Major “Dream of Love,” and the last two études from the Transcendental Études – Evening Harmonies, and Snow-whirls in his American debut.
Diego ably plied a strong hand over the Nocturne’s tip-of-the-tongue familiar melody, letting it linger just enough to show an innate sense of melodic construction. This sense more than made up for the small scattering of dropped notes. This was a big debut after all!
With Evening Harmonies, that strong hand became even more aggressive, which lent a curiously welcome pointillistic aura to what are ostensibly more melismatic sections. The section of broken chords in the bass did drag slightly, but Diego’s sure sense of melody, wonderful dynamic choices and superb octave runs brought a wonderful close to this emotive work.
Diego Suarez
Diego finished with the last of the Transcendental Études, Snow-whirls, and truly found his voice. In another example of Liszt’s œuvre as Zen koan, Diego’s crisp attack payed off in emotional grandeur as the whirling tremolo grew into quite a raging storm. The melody swept through this cauldron of flurries, buffeted and bemused, knowing that wherever it landed would be home. Bravo!
Our program concluded with a jaw-dropping reading of Après une lecture de Dante (Fantaisie quasi Sonate). Performed by Irwin Jiang, this diabolic one-movement sonata describes Dante’s descent in Inferno. Irwin captured its dark fanfare of an opening to near perfection, and then did not let go. As the roiling melody leaves the shores of the Acheron for Malebolge (and deeper…), its technical difficulty becomes the means of exacting its emotion. But even in the rare quiet passages, Irwin retained the fervor needed to continue his journey with Virgil. And just at the perfect moment, this mad bubbling congealed into an overarching pathos, holding the audience in rapt attention until our journey was done. Bravo! And again, Bravo!
Bravo! and again BRAVO! for Diego Suarez. Excellent reportage.