Jenny Lin, February 27, 2011

In an intriguing program, pianist Jenny Lin selected five Preludes and Fugues this afternoon from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 and surrounded each with a pair of Preludes and Fugues from Shostakovich's Opus 87. The story is fairly well-known: Shostakovich heard Tatiana Nikolayeva play all 48 of the Bach Preludes and Fugues (Books 1 and 2) in 1950, and suitably inspired or challenged, wrote his own set of 24, one in each major and minor key. So interleaving the Bach and Shostakovich in a performance has a certain appeal. Will we hear more than a superficial connection? A lot has to do with the particular choices in each Shostakovich-Bach-Shostakovich trio, and Lin's choices worked quite well, with neighboring pieces in nearby keys, sometimes nearer than you might think. The Bach E minor Fugue, for example, ends on an E major chord, so going directly into the E major prelude of Shostakovich was easy on the ear.

So was Ms. Lin's playing. She came out on stage looking cool, calm, and collected, making eye contact with the audience (unlike some players), and sitting comfortably at the keyboard, all of which puts the audience at ease. It would be inaccurate to call her playing "relaxed"; "completely confident" would be better, and considering that this was her debut recital in the Bay Area, that was a good sign. I especially enjoyed the clarity with which she brought out inner lines, even in the thick of 4- and 5-voice textures.

The transitions were sometimes illuminating, but not always. Exiting the Shostakovich C major fugue, which contains only white notes and therefore keeps a certain simplicity, and entering the Bach C major prelude, with its white-note arpeggios (for 5 bars, anyway) seemed not to be a 200-year jump at all. On the other hand, following that with the Shostakovich A minor prelude, played at breakneck speed, seemed jarring, despite the harmonic connection. (A similarly troppo presto tempo seemed to derail the Bach E Minor fugue for a few bars.)

One naturally thinks of the influence of Bach on the Shostakovich pieces, but the performer must also consider the effect of Shostakovich on the Bach. For example, the Bach pieces are often played with varying nontrivial amounts of ornamentation, mordents and trills and grace notes and so on, whereas the Shostakovich is not, so if you're juxtaposing them to bring out their similarities, you would likely play the Bach fairly straight. Lin did that, except in the C# minor prelude, where the ornaments seemed overdone, even though they would be mild for most Bach performances.

(Actually, the older I get, the less ornamented I like my Bach. An ornament draw attention to a note, and some performers get so carried away that the ornaments cease being the icing on the cake and become the cake itself. That wouldn't be an issue for, say, Couperin. I heard a brilliant concert earlier this month by Juho Pohjonen, who played pieces from Couperin's Fourth Book for Harpsichord, followed by Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin, where the point was to highlight the difference between the original and the homage, and moreover, where the icing really is the cake.)

The Bach C# minor fugue is a grand, stately affair, one of my favorites, and stylistically, it is closer to the Shostakovich D minor double fugue than to the A Flat major or D Flat major preludes that surrounded it. Similarly, the Bach D major fugue, with its flight of quick 32nd notes followed by slow, dotted eighths, is closest to the Shostakovich B Flat minor fugue, with similar figures. That may be the strangest piece in the entire Shostakovich Opus 87: one might call it "dreamy," following no discernible rhythm. Indeed, it's hard to imagine a fugue, Western civilization's most structured art form, as such a free-flowing piece. In this enlightening performance, it suddenly occurred to me that this fugue sounds like bird calls: they're all the same melody, but they're completely asynchronous and tonally unrelated. It's not every piano recital of Bach or Shostakovich that reminds you of Messiaen.

Rafal Blechacz, February 20, 2011

Rafal Blechacz is a 25-year-old pianist from Poland with a long list of awards, and he is particularly known for his Chopin. His recital this afternoon at Herbst Theater, sponsored by Chamber Music San Francisco, had lots of Chopin but started out with the "9 Variations in C Major on Lison dormait" by Mozart, "L'isle joyeuse" by Debussy, and the Sonata No. 1 in C minor, Op. 8, by Karol Szymanowski. The Mozart is a 20-minute work, pretty, but surprisingly lightweight for the 22-year-old Mozart, well into his maturity. Blechascz' playing was crystal clear; if anything, he made it sound too simple for a recital. It reminded me of the time I heard heard Arkdai Volodos play a Schubert piece, a strange choice for someone with keyboard-crushing technique and repertoire.

The Debussy was brilliant, perhaps a tad fast, but a pleasure to hear. The Szymanowski was the major work on the first half. Written when he, too, was 22, the 30-minute work sounded less to me like Chopin (an influence on much of Szymanowsky's music) and more like Godowsky: richly harmonic, and pianistically grand-scale. The opening movement ends with such a flourish that some members of the audience started applauding; Blechacz even acknowledged it by standing and taking a bow, which was unusual. The piece is in C minor; the second movement is in A-flat major, but there are ominous low C's near the end, reminding us of where we came from, and where we will return in the final movement. The cheery third movement alternates between E-flat major and B major, but the fourth movement has us back in C minor, and with a grand, exciting fugue. Near the very end, there's a full-keyboard glissando, leading to a bright conclusion in C major, which is where this recital began. The last few bars are a little odd: trills in both hands slow down the action, when the scale of the piece would seem to demand something simpler, bigger, and louder. But Blechacz did a wonderful job with this unfamiliar piece, and was richly applauded.

The second half began and ended with two of Chopin's four Ballades, in G minor and F Major. In between there were two Polonaises, Op. 26, and four Mazurkas, Op. 41. (The 4th, in A-flat Major, was incorrectly listed as A-flat minor.) I know the Ballades well, but the Polonaises and Mazurkas were new to me. However, they sounded rock-solid, old-hat here, and one understands why this pianist has done so well with Chopin: it's in his blood, of course, but it's also in his head, his hands, and his heart. I actually found the F Major Ballade a little rushed and pedal-heavy for my tastes, and I've seen lesser pianists crack under the strain of this piece. Perhaps Blechacz will approach it differently in ten years' time, when there's less pressure to dazzle with sheer technique and more time to savor the richness of all one zillion notes.

Blechacz played two encores, one by Chopin (I should know which one it was -- it has themes that also appear in one of the Piano Concertos), and one probably not by Chopin (Haydn?). The pianist, who's young, tall, and handsome, was very popular with many of the younger members of the audience, who had to be reminded by the series director not to take photos, to film the entire concert (I've seen that done in Herbst), to send text messages, to watch the Simpsons, "et cetera." From my seat upstairs, I'm also noticing that the ubiquitous smartphones, with their brightly lit little screens, are now joined by iPads, with their brightly lit large screens. Fortunately they were dark during the performance. Unfortunately, there were a couple of ringing phones and a lot of coughing, but the pianist played bravely on.

I look forward to hearing Blechacz again.