Barbican Hall
Études, op.10
Trois Nouvelles Études, B130
Études, op.25
I do not think I had previously heard all of Chopin’s piano studies given on a single evening. Fortunately, Louis Lortie’s recital was not one of those occasions on which one ends up thinking that might have made more sense as a CD than a concert programme; there is certainly much to be gained by hearing the works together, not only the two celebrated sets, but also the Trois Nouvelles Études written in 1839 as a contribution to Ignaz Moscheles and François-Joseph Fétis’s Méthode des méthodes de piano. It is not unusual in a piano recital to feel that the music following the interval flows more freely; if that was the case here, that is not to say that the first half was without interest, far from it. And whatever quibbles one might have – there will always be something – there is something heroic to the very attempt, let alone to its navigation with such success.
Indeed, Lortie’s way with the op.10 Études was in some ways surprising. Often, the technical difficulties underlying the idea of a study came across more strongly than usual as essence as opposed to mere starting-point. In the opening C major piece, fingerwork and basic figuration very much were the music material. In the F major Étude, all was generated from tightly sprung rhythms. Voice-leading very much did its work in the E-flat major and minor studies. There was a keen sense of progression too, the C-sharp minor study vehement, torrential even, and notably proceeding from its two immediate predecessors. That is not to say there was not lyricism, as for instance in the E major study, given not without rubato yet enough simplicity; but even there, the technical ‘point’ of the piece shone through. Whether the balance tilted too much in that direction is doubtless in part a matter of taste, though for me sometimes it did. I certainly felt the loss of subjectivity in the ‘Revolutionary’ Study, an odd anti-climax whose detachment felt at odds with ‘problem’ and material alike.
The three Nouvelles Études seemed to strike a better overall balance, as did the op.25 set. In the former, Scarlatti’s ‘ingenious jesting with art’ came to mind, Lortie uncommonly successful even among great pianists in transforming the ‘problem’ into music from the outset. The first in particular can readily sound more an ‘exercise’ than anything else, but here was deeply involving; as, in its necessarily lighter way, was the second. The A-flat major opening study of op.25 built and sang, its trajectory beautifully plotted. Slightly odd hesitations in the second piece of the op.10 set were nowhere to be heard in the long line of its counterpart here, whilst the richness of texture in the succeeding F major study proved duly engrossing. Technical demands were not banished, but there was a more consistent, conventional sense of these as miniature tone poems proceeding from a technical question: nowhere more so than in the G-sharp minor Étude. A delectable G-flat major Étude dug just deep enough. The concluding C minor piece of this set worked considerably better to my ears as a conclusion than its counterpart prior to the interval, very much a profound utterance of the soul.
The first encore – alas, I missed the second – a generous G minor Ballade, was oddly dream-like: not necessarily how I think of it, but successfully reimagined on Lortie’s own terms. This was, then, anything but a run-of-the-mill Chopin recital. I was often thrilled and, even where slightly puzzled, found myself at least intrigued.
