Salzburg Festival (9) – Buniatishvili: Schubert, Liszt, and Stravinsky, 21 August 2019

Grosses Festspielhaus

Schubert: Four Impromptus, D 899

Schubert-Liszt: Schwanengesang: ‘Ständchen’, D 957/4; Gretchen am Spinnrade, D 118; Erlkönig, D 328

Liszt: Études d’exécution transcendante: no.4, ‘Mazeppa’; Hungarian Rhapsody no. 6 in D-flat major, S 244/6

Stravinsky: Three Movements from ‘Petrushka’

Image: Salzburger Festspiele / Marco Borrelli

At what point does ‘interesting’ become ‘perverse’? At what point does ‘strong personal interpretation’ become ‘self-indulgent’? At what point does a recital become solely about the performer, having long since left behind any reasonable claim to be performing ‘the music itself’? The answer to those and other such questions will always depend: not only on the particulars of the performance, but on the listener’s own personal inclination, which itself may, almost certainly will, vary from concert to concert, and indeed from performer to performer. A performer in whom one holds a particular, often longstanding, interest will most likely be received very differently from one in whom one does not. For me, at any rate, not only was the point in those respective journeys was reached soon in this case; Khatia Buniatishvili’s eccentric ‘comet’ continued hurtling through the skies to destinations rarely imagined, let alone visited, some way past, say, Planet Pogorelich, to draw an obvious, if not entirely just comparison.

The opening set of Schubert Impromptus was bizarre, but not without interest (for me, at least), nor without seductive tone. I wondered to begin with, given the present later on the programme of Schubert-Liszt and Liszt unhyphenated, whether Buniatishvili were attempting to play them, even recompose them, in some imagined Lisztian style: a fascinating proposition. It soon became clear that if so, she needed to study Liszt as well as Schubert a little harder: in terms not of technique, for she can certainly muster something of the transcendental when she decides to, but of any degree of musical understanding. At any rate, the C minor Impromptu opened, at least in my imagination, as if attempting some sort of Lisztian paraphrase of the work. I could not imagine what Schubert might have thought, but perhaps Liszt might have liked it. What, I think, he would not have liked, nor would Schubert, was the persistent ‘dramatisation’ of every single phrase, nor the incessant reduction in already-absurd tempo from glacial to more glacial. The music, marked Allegro molto moderato, struggled ever to reach Andante. Its successor, marked Allegro, was taken at a tempo one might have described at least as Presto, arguably faster. It sounded like little more than a Czerny study. If the first had been interesting after a fashion, this was at best glib.

Andante for the G-flat major Impromptu? Of course not: more akin to Lento. But it had its moments. I did not mind Buniatishivili’s pauses for emphasis, though I can imagine they would have irritated many. The music was often in danger of being smothered with affection, or something else, but at its best, this was a performance imbued with a dark Romanticism that not only provoked but also enticed. At worst, I fear, it was merely distended. The final Impromptu descended into mere caricature: whether of a Liszt paraphrase or of what we had already, I was unsure. It was pulled around mercilessly, but worse, was often atrociously phrased and sometimes quite without phrasing at all. Some audience oddball leaped up immediately and hurled flowers her away, perhaps having miscalculated his timing of the equinox. An audience of fans, replete with wearying applause after each and every impromptu, was clearly seeing and hearing what it had come for.

Schubert-Liszt fared little better, alas. Indeed, this was just the treatment that tends to give Liszt, with or without hyphen, a bad name. The Schwanengesang ‘Ständchen’ was slow, if not quite bizarrely so: at least to begin with, or perhaps at least with respect to the expectations I had now internalised. You will be well able to fill in the rest by now. Some left-hand voicing was exquisite, on its own terms, but really: all that sotto voce narcissism… Ultimately, Buniatishvili slowed for diminuendi and sped up for crescendi: the sort of thing a good piano teacher drums out of one round about Grade 2. A telephone call for once raised a smile on my face rather than the usual glare. A seemingly interminable tragifarce finally terminated, we heard a Gretchen am Spinnrade full of similar cheap tricks, the balance between some lines so peculiar that it sounded closer to a minimalist film-track than I have ever heard Schubert sound before: quite some achievement, given those harmonies. Erlkönig began reasonably straight: it sort of has to. At least I had thought so, the pianist’s closing accelerando offering playing to the gallery of the very worst kind.

After the interval, we heard more Liszt, followed by Stravinsky. Mazeppa brought awe-inspiring technique, wonderful sounds-in-themselves, and no phrasing, let alone any sense of the piece. By this time, I was fully of the mind that Buniatishvili should be sat down and made to play in the style of Alfred Brendel for the next three years. A Hungarian Rhapsody was, well, rhapsodic, but full of interpretative choices so perverse that I soon lost all interest: as if Buniatishvili were offering a handy compendium of all her worst choices so far. And some of that hammering away was plain ugly: something one should never be able to say of Liszt. What was my safe word again? Brendel?

Stravinsky’s Three Movements from ‘Petrushka’ were often plain careless. Here there were far too many wrong notes, still more taken at individual, self-regarding micro-tempi, and inexplicable accents all over the place. My aesthetics are hardly identical to Stravinsky’s, but how I should love to have heard his inevitable condemnation. I cannot imagine why anyone would hear this music, let alone play it, like this. Dear reader, I shall spare you the encores; if only I likewise had been spared.

Buniatishvili - Ravel, Brahms, Chopin, and Stravinsky, 4 June 2014

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Ravel – Gaspard de la nuit

Brahms – Intermezzi: op.117 nos 1 and 2, op.118 no.2

Chopin – Scherzo no.2 in B-flat major, op.31

Ravel – La Valse

Stravinsky – Three Movements from ‘Petrushka’

Khatia Buniatishvili (piano) 

It was not difficult on the basis of this recital to understand why comparisons have been drawn between Khatia Buniatishvili and Martha Argerich. Though Buniatishvili is definitely her own person, and such comparisons rarely shed much light, there is a not entirely dissimilar fire in performance. With one exception, I was greatly impressed here.

 

In a reversal of the advertised running order, the first half opened with Gaspard de la nuit, followed by three Brahms Intermezzi. ‘Ondine’ opened with quiet shimmering, making its way towards reminiscences of Liszt that were never too much.  Buniatishvili’s ppp was quite mesmerising. Much the same might be said of ‘Le Gibet’. Inexorable tread was observed yet there remained an appropriately nymph-like lightness of touch. Chords were somehow both crystalline and upon the verge of dissolution. The pianist’s control was little short of awe-inspiring; likewise, if in a different way, in the case of ‘Scarbo’. Debussyan pyrotechnics were perhaps a little cool at times, but there was ultimately plenty of that aforementioned fire.

 

The trio of Brahms pieces made for an affecting, thoughtful change of musical voice. The first piece from op.117 offered a sense of ancient familiarity, something almost folk-like, yet without any hint of the routine. One was subtly rendered aware of the undeniably modern quality of its lines and their progress, not the first time Buniatishvili’s skill at voicing came into its own. The apparent simplicity of its ternary form was revealed through variation to be development, no mere ornamentation. A mood of expressive intimacy continued in op.117 no.2; if anything, it was intensified. The A major of op.118 no.2 came as balm, though introspection and circumspection ensured that ambiguity remained, at least for more time than they were eroded. Though in no real sense a Schoenbergian performance, the absolute necessity of every note was communicated, albeit without didacticism.

 

Chopin’s B-flat minor Scherzo was the exception I mentioned, though, judging by the audience’s reaction, mine was a minority opinion. It was on the brisk side, though far from inflexible. The problem for me was that much of the material sounded underplayed, reduced to the ‘merely’ ornamental. Something of that iron necessity governing the Brahms pieces would have been welcome here. Structure was clear in an external sense, but form remained curiously lacking in dynamism. It may be grossly unfair to invoke Pollini here; nevertheless, I longed for his deeper understanding. That said, in the second encore, the finale to Prokofiev’s Seventh Piano Sonata, Buniatishvili’s pianism proved every inch the equal of the Italian pianist in his legendary recording.

 

The solo piano version of La Valse remains a poor substitute for the ‘real thing’, though I can well imagine we might feel differently had we never heard it. Again, Buniatishvili took the piece at considerable speed; perhaps one needs to, without the sustaining power of a full orchestra. Sometimes she might have yielded more, but that was not too much of a problem. What I missed, and this may well be as much a matter of the version as the performance, was a sense of darkness, indeed of tragedy; it remained on the level of a tour de force, though the virtuosity in itself was spellbinding.

 

There was little to fear from even the most exalted of comparisons (such as Pollini, again) in the Three Movements from ‘Petrushka’. Exuberant, vigrorous, precise: here, there was no reason whatsoever to miss the extraordinary colours of Stravinsky’s orchestra. Dramatic characterisation, variety of touch and articulation, great dynamic range: all were equally impressive. Rhythm often governed, as it should, but not at the expense of melody. A rare slip served only to show that the purveyor of such pianism was human after all. And those glissandi…!

 

Capuçon/Buniatishvili: Brahms, Bartók, and Beethoven, 14 January 2014

Wigmore Hall

Brahms – Violin Sonata no.2 in A major, op.100

Bartók – Violin Sonata no.2
Beethoven – Violin Sonata no.5 in F major, op.24, ‘Spring’

Renaud Capuçon (violin)

Khatia Buniatishvili (piano)

 

This proved to be an outstanding recital. The first movement of Brahms’s A major sonata was perhaps a little more tentative than the rest, Renaud Capuçon taking a little while to get into full flow, but that is really the only cavil that I can muster. Capuçon’s partner, Khatia Buniatishvili, made her presence felt straight away, spreading some of the piano chords in a way that took one back to what, despite the cliché, one can hardly but think of as a golden age of pianism. The chastity of the opening to the first movement suggested assemblage of building blocks; it was an intriguing alternative to being plunged immediately into the thick of it. If the basic tempo were a little slower, more reflective, than one often hears, that served to remind us that Brahms’s marking is not merely Allegro but Allegro amabile; I found it very convincing, and there was in any case a great deal of flexibility, not for its own sake, but with sound musical justification. Real passion was to be heard, but the hushed moments were just as telling. Once Capuçon was fully in his stride, his tone and vibrato, perfectly allied to bowing, could not have been better judged. Moreover, both players ensured that we were fully aware of the extraordinary concision of this first movement. In the second movement, Capuçon’s portamenti – never excessive, yet certainly present – and general suavity likewise put me in mind of an earlier generation of violinists: we might almost have been listening to Thibaud and Cortot. Again, the Andante tranquillo probably took a little more time than often, but in context, the tempo seemed just ‘right’. The kinship of Brahms’s piano writing with his late piano pieces sounded closer than ever, whilst the Vivace sections emerged as true trios, teeming with life yet never rushed. Brahms’s score breathed, beguiled, and most importantly, intrigued. One sensed in each phrase a wealth of possibilities which, after the event, but only after the event, could only ever have been resolved in one way: Hegel’s owl of Minerva only spreading its wings at dusk. The ghostliness of the Vivace reprise hinted at the spirit of Beethoven (the Fifth Symphony?); so did the final bloom. And there was real danger in the performance: at no point did it sound over-rehearsed, the players clearly reacting to each other. The final movement opened as if a continuation of what had gone before rather than a new beginning, yet a heightened sense of Romantic fantasy brought novelty enough. Again, the player’s admirable metrical flexibility, allied to clear motivic understanding, proved a well-nigh ideal combination. I should love to hear them in Schoenberg and Webern.

 

A myriad of colours announced themselves in the opening bars of Bartók’s second sonata, those bars offering a wealth of possibilities to be taken up in what followed: harmonically, rhythmically, melodically as well, indeed in terms of every parameter. A guiding spirit quite properly seemed to be the dialectic between freedom and determinism, heightened by a febrile tension in performance such as one only rarely hears. In context, one heard Bartók’s music as more post-Brahmsian than one might otherwise do. Line and voicing evoked Bartok’s concerto writing for both instruments; there was quiet as well as virtuosic integrity here. Much the same might be said of the second movement. An especially admirable quality was the way in which rhythm emerged not, as too often seems to be the case in such music, as something ‘in itself’, but musically inextricable from the other characteristics of the musical material and its expression. The shifting between moods, those crucial moments of transition, showed apparently irreconcilable material to be anything but. Last but not least, the sheer musical charisma of Capuçon and Buniatishvili had me mesmerised from beginning to end.

 

Beethoven’s Spring Sonata sounded from the outset – and again, the cliché will have to be forgiven, or at least endured – newly-minted. Capuçon and Buniatishvili lived and expressed the formal dynamism that too often is lacking in modern Beethoven performances, and without detriment to expressive detail. This was an urgency founded in harmony and motivic development, not in the false friend of the metronome. The moment of the exposition’s repeat thus announced itself as veritably heart-breaking: a genuine yet forlorn attempt to return to a Mozartian paradise that was now unattainable. By contrast, the initiation of the development section somehow registered as a true surprise, even though one knew it was coming, Haydn’s influence continuing to run deep. Capuçon’s vigorous annunciation of this section served to propel the rest of the movement; it was really quite something to hear Beethoven apparently reborn like this. And then, the recapitulation, which simply took one’s breath away: it might almost have been Schubert. That was not all, however, for the intensity of Beethoven’s thematic working had us feel that this was almost a second development, no mere ‘return’. Such, moreover, was the palpable, at times frankly erotic, tension that this oft-misunderstood sonata might have been an offshoot of Don Giovanni. The slow movement gloried in a sense of communion with Nature that undoubtedly looked forward to the Pastoral Symphony. That communion was attained not least through the players’ unerring sense of melos, which took in both post-Mozartian profusion and Haydn’s rigorous economy of means, whilst remaining true to Beethoven’s soul itself. The scherzo, immediately attacked, sounded with all that febrile intensity experienced in the Bartók sonata; it proved as concise and as expressive as anything in Webern. Beethoven’s finale was given a properly loving performance that yet never indulged. Accents were played with, to just the right extent. It teemed with life, driven by harmony rather than the externally-applied shock-tactics of the ‘authentic’ brigade. And crucially, it possessed the weight of a finale. It was difficult not to think that a great Beethovenian such as Daniel Barenboim, even Furtwängler, would have approved.