Beethoven – Piano Sonata no.5 in C minor, op.10 no.1
Schubert – Piano Sonata in B-flat major, D 960
Sad to say, this must rank as one of the most disappointing piano recitals I have heard in quite some time. Whether Stephen Kovacevich’s pianism has deteriorated, or whether the recording studio has worked wonders, it is difficult for me to say, this being the first time I have heard him give a full recital, but there were but a few glimmers of something less than dispiriting here.
The
Beethoven C minor sonata, op.10 no.1, opened brusquely, more Presto than Molto allegro e con brio. There was no let up for the second
subject either. More worryingly, a good amount of passagework was blurred.
Though there was a sort of defiance to the performance that might just about be
called Beethovenian, humour, let alone charm, were notable only by their
absence. This was Beethoven alla Toscanini,
albeit without the technical control. The opening of the slow movement was
refreshing, indeed quite beautifully voiced. Phrasing soon stiffened, however,
suffocating the music. A greater line was absent, not through the more
frequently-encountered pianistic habit of pulling the music around to no
greater end, but through a literalness so dogged that it apparently prevented
Kovacevich from joining the dots. Harmonic jolts registered with force, it must
be admitted, and some phrases were lifted up from utter mundanity: a frustrating,
tantalising sign of what might have been. The finale benefited from a return of
the first movement’s insistence, but that all too readily tipped over into
brutalisation. Technical insecurities were, however, more disturbing, some
passagework again fluffed or skated over.
There
was promise to the opening bars of op.110, beguiling in their apparent
simplicity. Yet Kovacevich again tended to skate over some of the faster passages.
For the most part, the music meandered along nicely enough, sometimes vehemently, but to say that that is
not enough for Beethoven would register as the understatement of the year. The
scherzo veered, sadly, between the disjunct and the straightforwardly
incoherent. Beethoven’s Klagender Gesang, if hardly intense or otherwise moving, at least
did not fall too short technically. The first appearance of the fugue was
better still, voiced and directed meaningfully and sounding for the most part
as if it were actually piano music. The return of the slow material, however,
was oddly halting, and the fugue in its second incarnation was reduced to muddy
incoherence. Thank goodness I was not having to take dictation, for I should
have failed miserably to discern vast swathes of the notes.
That said, there was hope, following the interval. The first movement
of Schubert's final sonata opened with considerable sensitivity, not least to inner voices, though ‘sensitive’
is certainly not the word I should use to describe the weird combination of ultra-abrupt,
even brutal, curtailment of the left-hand quaver in bar 9 whilst permitting the
right hand’s chord to continue to resonate almost indefinitely. The same thing
happened in the recapitulation – there was no exposition repeat – so it was
definitely intended, but to my ears at least it sounded very odd indeed. There remained many
instances of touch hardening and of undue brusqueness, but at least there was to be gleaned
greater Beethovenian purpose to the development section than there had been to
any of Beethoven’s own developments. If Schubert’s music did not move me once – a disturbing thing to say about this work – the performance nevertheless gave a
sense of a greater whole. The slow movement was certainly not sentimentalised;
it was faster than I can ever recall hearing, or at least so it sounded. Again,
in context, that was something of a relief, though no depths were plumbed. As for the scherzo, it was so rushed as to be
garbled, denying any real impression of what the music might be, let alone
mean. It was faultlessly metronomic, if that is your thing, but the trio
lurched around as if the metronome were malfunctioning. Kovacevich’s tempo for
the finale was more reasonable, and potentially manageable, but his performance
was so heavy-handed beyond belief.
The rondo theme was bereft of light and shade, and so it went on and on, dogged
by quite the wrong sort of grim insistence.
