St John’s, Smith Square
Brahms – Sonata in F minor for
two pianos, op.34b
Messiaen – Visions de l’Amen
Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Tamara Stefanovich (pianos)
I am not sure that I had ever
heard Brahms’s op.34 (the Piano Quintet, to most of us) in its earlier, but not
earliest, two piano version. The first movement, in this intriguing, sometimes
even provocative, performance from Tamara Stefanovich and Pierre-Laurent
Aimard, emerged not so much monochrome as with a different, darker palette.
This was certainly not ‘old school’ Brahms, if such a thing ever existed.
(Perhaps it did, but if so, with an array of options, certainly not as a
monolith.) The tone I heard from Aimard, to whom I was seated closest, perhaps
came closest to a pianist such as the Maurizio Pollini of ten or fifteen years
ago. The music, of course, sounded very different; if, ultimately, I could not
quite bring myself to dissent from Clara Schumann’s thought, quoted in Joanna
Wyld’s programme note, that it ‘had the impression of a transcribed work’,
there is often much to be learned from transcriptions, and perhaps especially
what we might call transcriptions avant
la lettre. Counterpoint was often clarified, although differences in attack
occasionally perplexed (my fault, not that of the performance, I am sure). A
curious passage of near- (yet not quite) stasis in the development had me
almost (yet not quite) think forward in the programme to Messiaen. And then, of
course, we moved forward once again. A darkly Romantic recapitulation, offered
a sense of chiaroscuro with cross-stage echoing of post-Mendelssohn leggierezza, offered much more to
intrigue, even to confound.
Our pianists were in no danger
of confusing sentiment and sentimentality in the slow movement. What initially,
to untutored ears (mine included), might have sounded a little dour, revealed
its riches both horizontally and vertically, clearly prefiguring Schoenberg.
Motivic complexity bred harmonic motion, and vice versa. I was struck several times, as so often with Brahms,
how certain turns of phrase, especially in conjunction with harmony, had much
in common with Schubert. The performers’ sense of onward tread was not
dissimilar to his music either. A surprising, rather winning sense of
near-swing to the opening of the scherzo was soon confounded by muscular
strength of rhythm. Rhythms, though, could equally be lightly sprung. There was
no more humour here than there would be in a Chopin scherzo, yet Beethovenian
provenance remained clear. At times, the music seemed to cry out for an
orchestra (as Clara suggested).
The abruptness of the ending
seemed to prepare, or perhaps defiantly not to prepare, the way for the sheer
strangeness (Book of the Hanging Gardens-strangeness)
of the introduction to the finale. Tonality was not dead yet, though, as the
almost Mozartian profusion of material seemed determined, if not quite without
equivocation, to demonstrate. This was Brahms of a Romantic-modernist hue such
as we hear far too rarely. I am not sure I have ever heard his music sound
quite so perplexing in its alienation. At times, the music might almost have
been by Busoni. (Now there is a thought for repertoire these artists might
tackle…)
With the opening bar of
Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen we heard
music that sounded far more at ease with the piano(s): Liszt’s tradition, then,
one might say, rather than Brahms’s. And indeed I struggle to think of anything
that Messiaen and Brahms have in common: this was quite a contrast, and again a
provocative one at that. A magical contrast between treble registers and bass
registers was to be heard in this ‘Amen de la création’. All manner of thoughts
and feelings relating to Creation theology suggested themselves, although I am
sure one might equally listen to this as something approaching that ever
chimerical ‘absolute music’, if for some reason one wished to. The interaction
of rhythmic security and metrical subtlety seemed just as important to the
music’s progress as its harmonies. Nevertheless, or perhaps even because of
that, Messiaen’s Debussyan heritage – this is piano music, after all – loomed large.
For a slow-burn crescendo, and for much else, this was difficult to beat.
Mussorgskian bells (Boris Godunov)
pealed, not without menace, or at least disquietude.
Mussorgsky’s ghost perhaps
remained during the ensuing ‘Amen des étoiles, de la panète à l’anneau’.
Scurrying figures reminded me on occasion of his Pictures at an Exhibition. Darkness of spirit was conveyed: angels
are not merely, or even generally, ‘nice’. They, like the music and its
performance, are ever inspiring, never predictable, awe-inspiring. Grey
secularism could likewise not have stood further from the ensuing ‘Amen de l’agonie
de Jésus’. Agony does not necessarily mean what the secular-minded think it
does, not entirely anyway. Here there was ecstasy in radiant beauty, something
lying quite beyond mere ‘pain’, indeed sublimely dissociated therefrom. Late
Liszt hovered in the air at the close, above all in Aimard’s low, very low bass
notes.
‘Amen du désir’ brought
reminders of an earlier, more perfumed Messiaen, this celestial banquet yet
also prefiguring certain aspects of Turangalîla,
both for better and for worse. It nauseated; it more than skirted with the
banal. But that was part of the point. By way of sharp contrast, the ‘Amen des
anges, ses saints, du chant des oiseaux’ opened as if an antiphon were being
intoned; in a sense, it is. It then went on its cheerful way, seemingly assured
of its blessed nature, which again, one might say, in a sense, it is. The
performance brought out the importance of contrasting material: as important,
it seemed, as progress (I hesitate to say ‘development’) in time.
Majesty, not only in the
ravishingly voiced chords, but also in their juxtaposition, characterised for
me the sixth Amen, that of ‘jugement’. With the concluding, indeed
consummating, ‘Amen de la consommation’, this church-cum-concert-hall was
intoxicated, bewitched even, by a brew of ecstatic triumph and something
apocalyptic (Stefanovich), which seemed both to underlie and to undermine. Virtuosic
piano tradition was here relished – and yet the music was clearly concerned
with matters that would have bewildered most other pianist-composers, with the
possible exception of Liszt, in that tradition or those traditions.
Extraordinary!
