Grosses Festspielhaus
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| Image: Salzburger Festspiele / Marco Borrelli |
Chopin:
Two Nocturnes, op.55
Chopin:
Barcarolle in F-sharp
major, op.60
Chopin:
Piano Sonata no.3 in B
minor, op.58Debussy: Préludes, Book II
Maurizio Pollini (piano)
My final piano recital before
leaving London was Maurizio Pollini’s Festival Hall performance of a similar
programme: different Chopin, same Debussy. I have not (yet) reread my review,
but offer a
link, in case anyone wishes to compare. Needless to say, the London concert
was excellent indeed, but this was probably better still – if good, better,
best mean anything here, a big ‘if’. It is better, I think to take each concert
separately, at least at first, which is certainly what I did in the Grosses
Festspielhaus. At any rate, Pollini in Chopin and Debussy made for an
outstanding conclusion to another memorable week in Salzburg.
There has been a great deal of
uncomprehending criticism of Pollini recently, notably from many of the same
people who had quite the contrary criticisms until a few years ago. Those who
tediously disparaged his technique – as if superlative technique somehow
precluded musicianship – now, still more tediously, pounce upon occasional
slips. In both cases, not only do they miss the point; they tacitly acknowledge
that their criticism, if one may call it that, concerns something else
entirely. The actual reason, more often than not, is a dislike of the artist
born of a longstanding history of political commitment in and through his
music-making. (On that subject, see the beautiful film by Bettina Ehrhardt, Abbado/Nono/Pollini: A Trail on the Water.)
Why mention that here? Partly
to provide context, which for some readers of such low journalism may be
missing, but also because, to my horror, I actually wondered, during the
opening Nocturne, op.55 no.1, whether recent jibes might actually have had some
force after all. It proceeded uncertainly, unsettling in perhaps not the right
way. There was a glimpse of the brilliance of old, but I found myself having to
persuade myself that everything I heard was quite as intended. Anyone, however,
can have a less than perfect start; none of us is a machine. And so, its E-flat
major companion consoled still more than usual: clear-sighted, yet involved,
its twists and turns not only navigated – anyone can do that, really – but navigated
meaningfully. The sense of developing variation was almost, perhaps surprisingly,
Schoenbergian, with a keen sense of some unspoken abyss yet beckoning. There
were even some steps seemingly taken on the path towards the dissolutions of
Debussy.
The Barcarolle’s opening chords unquestionably evinced the confidence
of old. Indeed, its music sang almost as if this were a carefree encore. The
waters glistened, glittered, not unlike those one sees and hears in the
aforementioned documentary film; as in Nono’s Venice, moreover, there was no
doubting their depth either. Chopin’s struggle, not entirely un-Beethovenian,
was such that I could not but listen to every note. (Not, I hasten to add, that
I wished to do otherwise.)
In the first movement of the
Third Sonata, formal ingenuity and dramatic intensity were clearly at one, both
in work and performance. The latter’s command of line was unerring: not just
horizontal, but vertical too. Again, the depth of understanding was such that I
was put in mind of Pollini’s Beethoven and Schoenberg. (I could really have
done without applause from a segment of the audience, though; what on earth
were those people thinking?) Opposing tendencies as extreme as in Beethoven or
Schoenberg were to be heard in the scherzo; the method of their opposition and,
to an extent, reconciliation was, rightly, entirely Chopin’s own. And, of
course, the brevity is as radical as Webern’s. Lisztian portents at the opening
of the slow movement swiftly saw their material corroded, even dissolved. The
movement was then built up not unlike a Nocturne, melody and harmony of equal stature,
indeed radically so. Chopin’s music sounded newly strange. As of course it did
in the astonishing finale, in whose white heat every note yet still mattered:
not in the banal sense of being heard but of meaning, even if that meaning
could not be translated into words. Music and performance were necessary:
which, coming very shortly after news of the attack in Barcelona, was just what
we needed to hear.
The Debussy Préludes never ceased to surprise, each
piece rethought, yet never for its own sake. The first was heard without
hammers, but certainly not without bells. What, then, twinkled in the treble? Why
ask? Do we need an object? A possible nod to such deconstruction reminded us
that Debussy’s titles – ‘Brouillards’, in this case – are to be read
afterwards, not beforehand, however utopian that idea. (If I use his titles now,
it is only because not to do so would render writing about the pieces unnecessarily
difficult; in any case, I am writing
after the event.) ‘Feuilles mortes’ hovered between development and something
else, not quite non-development; in its progress, or regress, lay
quintessential Debussyan ambiguity. And the sound of those chords under Pollini’s
fingers! ‘La puerta del Vino’ certainly banished any lingering ideas of the
picture postcard. In its dark outgrowth from the bass, ‘local’ rhythmic figures
took on new, quasi-autonomous meaning. Late Liszt here emerged as the father of
all, in harmonies that both led somewhere and nowhere.
Fairies that not only were
exquisite but also danced, ‘rapide et léger’ indeed, were our company in ‘Les fees
sont d’exquises danseuses’. Their dance, moreover, was by no means an easy one:
all the better, it seemed, darkly to seduce. ‘Bruyères’ was clearer than often,
musical process to the fore, though never clinically so. Its title was
definitely not the thing, but why should it (always) be? ‘General Lavine –
excentric’ evinced a cakewalk brutality that chilled in the light of Charlottesville
– and much else. It also, though, spoke of what we must not lose. So too did ‘La
terrasse des audiences du clair de lune’, as delectable in its precise
imprecision as in the unmistakeable aural glimpse of moonlight and the dances
such silvery imagining might provoke.
