Wigmore Hall
Lisa Illean: Sonata in ten parts (world premiere)
Beethoven: 33 Variations on a Waltz by Anton Diabelli, op.120
Cédric Tiberghien (piano)
How to present the Diabelli Variations? What better way than commissioning a new, related piano work to precede them? I should never have guessed that Lisa Illean’s Sonata in ten parts was her first work for solo piano, so assured was the writing, realised beautifully and meaningfully, as if a classic work, by Cédric Tiberghien. Each of the ten ‘parts’, which I think we might consider in some sense variations – the interesting question being variations on what? – is derived from a short passage, often as little as a bar, from Beethoven’s set. Interconnections in Illean’s own work were sometimes clear even on a first hearing; I suspect there will be more to be discovered on levels subterranean and subliminal. The opening seemed designed, both in work and performance, to invite us in, questing and uncertain (in a positive sense), full of potential. It was not Beethoven so much as Debussy and Schoenberg who initially came to my ears, though his ghost certainly visited the feast later on, perhaps as much through passages of unmistakeable dignity as through thematic connection. So too did others, Chopin and Brahms included. Not that these were necessarily overt references or even reminiscences, more points in common via, for instance, exquisite voice-leading (again both Illean’s and Tiberghien’s), use of the sustaining pedal, or horizontal employment of chords. Here was a splendidly old-school beauty of pianistic sonority put to contemporary musical ends, to the distinct benefit of both.
Tiberghien elected to offer his engaging
spoken introduction to the Diabelli Variations immediately after Illean’s
Sonata, leaving us to ponder during the interval before launching into
the fabled Schusterfleck. That worked very well, I thought, both in
forging a greater whole and in rejuvenating a Beethovenian shock of the new.
The Waltz, at any rate, was delectably sprung, without affectation, the first
variation an excellent alternative beginning, as if Beethoven were saying – and
surely he is – ‘that aside, now let us begin afresh’. As soon as its successor,
we were in definably ‘late’ territory, kinship to the composer’s early years apparent
in the third, for a distinct virtue of Tiberghien’s performance was sympathy to
the multiplicity of voices, letting them sing to combine in the unmistakeable single
voice of Beethoven. Here were humour, vigour, sheer élan, the knowingly
wayward, and so much more, stretching in reference from the beguiling
contrapuntal legacy of Bach, through heartfelt Mozartian equipoise, to Boulezian
‘organised
delirium’ (to borrow the title of Caroline Potter’s new book). Formal
command and communication were crucial, however lightly worn: one experienced
groups of variations as something akin to sonata movements, whether in the rapt
hush of a slow movement or the display of a finale. Overall balance and
individual character were equally well judged, a Beethovenian hour passing in
the twinkling of an eye. The composer’s apparent, readily explicable
unwillingness to let go for (almost) the last time was captured to near
perfection, as heart-rending as it was truthful. We had come home, though home
would never be quite the same again.
