Andsnes - Vustin, Janáček, Silvestrov, Beethoven, and Dvořak, 21 November 2022

Wigmore Hall

Aleksandr Vustin: Lamento
Janáček: Piano Sonata 1.X.1905, ‘From the Street’
Valentin Silvestrov: Bagatelle, op.1 no.3
Beethoven: Piano Sonata no.31 in A-flat major, op.110
Dvořák: Poetic Tone Pictures, op.85

Leif Ove Andsnes (piano)

Leif Ove Andsnes’s performances are always very well worth hearing; this programme, mixing the familiar and unfamiliar was no exception. The first half offered short pieces by Russian and Ukrainian composers, either side of Janáček’s tribute to František Pavlík, a worker killed demonstrating for a Czech university in Brno, followed by Beethoven’s penultimate sonata: however one considers it, and however clichéd this may sound, a sublime song from and to the human spirit and what it might yet achieve. 

Aleksandr Vustin, invited by Andsnes in 2019 to his Rosendal Chamber Festival, in what was only Vustin’s second journey outside Russia, died the following year, an early victim of the coronavirus pandemic. His Lamento, itself inspired by the funeral of a friend and its sounds, is tonal, yet moves in often surprising ways. Opening two-part left-hand writing soon has a right-hand melody soar above—a recollection, I learned later, of a bird that began to sing at the funeral and would not stop. It made for an interesting prelude to Janáček’s Sonata 1.X.1905, ‘From the Street’, its first movement in Andsnes’s performance both precise and suggestive: like work and composer, one might say. Proudly turbulent in its post-Romanticism, passages of its music seemed almost to acquire proto-filmic character, perhaps in slow motion, in remembrance. The composer’s profound national pride sang forth still more directly in the second movement, the stubbornness of his writing, not least in sheer persistence of figures, transmuted once more into a declaration of spirit, made with a fine sense of musical drama.

One of Valentin Silvestrov’s Bagatelles offered cool contrast, behaving (at least I fancied) not entirely unlike Vustin’s piece. The quiet dignity of Andsnes’s performance again made for an interesting prelude to a sonata, this time Beethoven’s in A-flat major, op.110. Its first movement sang with a simplicity both fragile and strong. Welcome, one might say, to late Beethoven. Fractures were often only implied; this was not the most modernist of accounts, nor was there any reason it should be. Yet implied they were. The turn to the minor was communicated with ineffable sadness, yet never mawkishness. Again, this was Beethoven. The scherzo’s gruff humour did not attempt to conceal the difficulties of the trio. The overriding impression was of shocking concision. Mournful dignity characterised Beethoven’s ‘Klagender Gesang’ in the finale, the fugue first offering release and intensification, its voicing to die for: beautiful, no doubt, yet above all truthful. Contrast and complement of material registered and developed throughout, the inverted fugue enabling yet in no sense guaranteeing ultimate triumph. There was, rightly, no easy path.

The second half was given to Dvořák’s Poetic Tone Pictures, op.85: new, I confess to me, and quite a discovery. Andsnes had explored them during lockdown, welcoming the discovery of ‘life-affirming music of the greatest invention and imagination’. Dvořák can occasionally pale alongside Janáček, but not here. This work emerged as a Schumannesque collection, played with affection, characterisation, and acute understanding. Indeed, the scene-setting of its first piece, ‘Night journey’ immediately brought Schumann to mind: not that it sounded ‘like’ Schumann, but in terms of the role it played in introduction, and its vein of fantasy. Andsnes’s communication of the charm and Romantic snares of this night was finely judged indeed. A wonderful procession of characters, scenes, sketches in a strong sense ensued: not unlike a good novel, or perhaps better, a collection of short stories. ‘At the old castle’ haunted. A vigorous ‘Furiant’ put Andsnes’s fingers duly through their paces. Dances of all kinds, goblins and all, invited us in—not always without danger. Exuberance and introspection informed one another across more elevated canvases and earthier songs. Andsnes’s cantabile in the ‘Serenade’ was just the thing, as was his Lisztian grandiloquence in ‘At a hero’s grave’. Fascinating—and nourishing.

Andsnes/Hamelin - Adams, Schumann, Debussy, and Stravinsky, 30 May 2022

Wigmore Hall

John Adams: Hallelujah Junction
Schumann, arr. Debussy: Six Studies in Canonic Form, op.56
Debussy: En blanc et noir
Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring

Leif Ove Andsnes, Marc-André Hamelin (pianos)

 

Two-piano recitals look, feel, and are very different from piano-duet recitals. Sometimes we have a mixture, but even then, performances look and sound very different, for obvious logistical reasons. Leif Ove Andsnes and Marc-André Hamelin offered four (five, if one counts the encore) works for two pianos, ultimately taking us to the very limits—sometimes, it seemed, beyond—of what is possible, even with two instruments and four hands, in The Rite of Spring. Stravinsky’s arrangement is actually for piano duet, but Andsnes and Hamelin reinstate some of the lines necessarily missing, at times giving a full orchestra a run for its money. A deservedly well attended, well appreciated concert heated up an otherwise dismal, late May evening. Maybe the gods were exacting revenge for a strange spring rite of unwitting lèse-majesté at Stonehenge.

 First, though, was neither Neolithic Wiltshire nor the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, but Hallelujah Junction, a truck stop on the border between California and Nevada. I am afraid John Adams’s piece does nothing for me. I could find nothing to signal compositional achievement beyond that of a generic, mid-1990s Channel 4 soundtrack, mixed with all-too-obvious ‘Americana’. As for the sentimental pseudo-Romantic harmonies of the central section, I presumed they were ‘ironic’, though perhaps not. The performance, though, was masterly, rhythmic tests passed with flying colours, not least in the final section in which the two pianists finally came into sync with one another, only to fall out again, ‘like a great malfunctioning mechanical player piano’, to quote Edward Bhesania’s evocative note. That I found diverting enough; the rest was evidently admired by most in the audience and enjoyed by both players.

 Adams over, I could breathe a sigh of relief and had no reservations whatsoever. Debussy’s 1891 arrangement for two pianos of Schumann’s Studies in Canonic form for pedal piano rarely disappoints, but here sheer ‘naturalness’ of musical response was second to none. Bach rightly emerged as the guiding spirit of the first, which paradoxically had one hear all that is not Bach all the more acutely. A melting performance, utterly pianistic, would surely have delighted Schumann and Debussy equally; Bach too, no doubt. From this ‘prelude’, greater pathos followed in the second study, its harmonic riches revealed with wisdom and ese. A winningly impetuous third study, harking back to the wide-eyed Romanticism of Schumann’s ‘Year of Song’ five years previously, filled one’s stomach with the loveliest of butterflies. Limpid, heartfelt, and noble in response, the fourth showed, in the building and subsiding of its more darkly involved central section, the truest virtues of such antiphonal performance. The fifth was resolute in a nicely post-Schubertian way, whilst the concluding study proved both developmental and summative: once more, a fine tribute to Bach.

Debussy’s own En blanc et noir opened as if paying brief homage to Schumann, then pressed on beyond. Its first movement offered clarity, direction, pianistic abandon and control, in as finely complementary duo playing as one could imagine—and then some. Tragedy penetrated necessary abstraction in the second movement, dedicated ‘ au Lieutenant Jacques Charlot tué à l’ennemi en 1915, le 3 mars’. Angels (la vielle France) and demons (war, Ein’ feste Burg) did battle, albeit with due ambiguity. This is music, not a tract, and so it sounded here. Anger, though, was barely suppressed, and why should it be? The scherzando, dedicated to Stravinsky, proved more elusive still, all the more so for resting on a rock-solid rhythmic base, above and sometimes beneath which passes all manner of musical entanglements.

 Debussy and Stravinsky gave a celebrated private performance of The Rite in the composer’s duet version. What it would have been to have heard that, though it is difficult to imagine it surpassing what we heard from Hamelin and Andsnes. Whenever one hears a good performance of the piano version, it is striking just how readily the opening bassoon lines, apparently so tied to their timbre, transfer. Who knows what wizardry is involved therein, but it was close to definitively unleashed on this occasion. More flexible at times than is possible (perhaps desirable) for orchestra, the performance lacked nothing in rhythmic solidity where it counted, its primitivism shockingly immanent. So too was clarity that enabled one to hear me manner of things I had never imagined were there, or so I fancied. Passages sounded closer to Petrushka than usual, surely in part on account of the medium. Others emerged hieratic enough to give Boulez a run for his money. Virtuosity took us to its limits and extended them. Yet for all the pounding, there was much delicacy too, and above all melody, which must lie at the heart (yes, the heart) of any Rite. What emerged more strongly than in any performance I can recall was the sheer tragic impulse of the second part, rooted harmonically, the radicalism of Stravinsky’s cellular organisation likewise becoming all the clearer as it progressed. Hamelin and Andsnes made the Rite strange again whilst remaining true to it: surely the ultimate goal of any performance worth our time.

 As an encore, we heard a tango composer by Hamelin himself, perfectly conceived for and realised on two pianos. Catchy and playful, it engaged in Ravel’s trick of having one ask what might lie beneath the beguiling, glittering surface, before immediately turning the joke on us by pointing out the silliness of the question.

Andsnes and friends - Brahms Piano Quartets, 28 May 2016

Milton Court Concert Hall

 

Piano Quartets nos 1-3

Leif Ove Andsnes (piano)

Christian Teztlaff (violin)

Tabea Zimmermann (viola)

Clemens Hagen (cello)

 

I remain sceptical about this sort of programming. Performing, say, Beethoven’s three final piano sonatas in a single recital makes a great deal of sense, although so likewise does performing them separately with other works, attempting to suggest, even to draw, connections. Performing all five of Prokofiev’s piano concertos does not, however much that combination of works might be helpful to collect as a 2-CD set. This concert, part of Leif Ove Andsnes’s LSO Artist Portrait series (albeit without any members of the LSO!), fell somewhere in between. It made for a long evening, especially when programmed in chronological order, with a single interval separating the first and second quartets. On the other hand, we do not hear these works nearly so often as we should – much the same might be said for any piano quartet – and hearing Brahms’s development is always interesting. If I should have preferred two or three concerts, including works by other composers, that was no reason to look a gift-horse in the mouth, for these were excellent performances from beginning to end, much as one might have expected from Andsnes, Christian Tetzlaff, Tabea Zimmermann, and Clemens Hagen.

 

First was the First, in G minor, op.25, as orchestrated, unforgettably, whether you like it or not, by Schoenberg. It was a strength of this performance, the first movement opening straight away with an echt-Brahms sound, that one did forget, and indeed I am now still hearing the original, not Schoenberg’s version, in my head. Strings, and then piano, sounded ‘right’ – which is not to say that there is only one ‘right’, of course, although there are surely many ‘wrongs’. It was not just the sound, though; phrasing and, cumulatively, paragraphs evinced a similar sense of ‘rightness’, all richly Romantic. (The disjuncture between literary and philosophical Romanticism and its musical counterpart, if counterpart it be, means that we cannot really call this ‘late Romanticism’. We probably should, but it would only serve to confuse.) A viola solo from Zimmermann, rich-toned and beautiful in itself, also brought so much more, heralding not only Andsnes’s elaboration, but, so it seemed, the whole of the second group, even the development. The development section itself brought half-lights (yes, this ‘early’ in Brahms’s career) and, of course, vehemence; both propelled the music. So, fundamentally, did the composer’s motivic working, which surely must have been the greatest attraction of all for Schoenberg, here heard meaningfully throughout, quite without pedantry. This was indeed ‘Brahms the Progressive’.

 

Romantic unease (earlier?) from Hagen’s underpinning cello characterised the second movement, permitting of great ambivalence, great ambiguity. Andsnes’s way with rhythm and its relationship, inextricable, to harmony assured motivic integrity, not that that was ever in doubt! Much the same might be said of the Andante, despite its different character. Menacing currents made their point without cheap exaggeration, for they had been prepared and understood harmonically by all concerned; this was true chamber music-making. There was vehemence in those martial rhythms later on, but harmony remained the ultimate mover. They cast their shadow over the return of the opening material, just as they should. There was likewise no doubting the urgency of the finale, taken at quite a lick, nor the astounding virtuosity of the players, but that was not at the expense of chiaroscuro. Contrasting episodes certainly contrasted, but within a greater unity to which they contributed.

The A major Quartet, op.26 followed. If I found this slightly less compelling, that is more a reflection of my response to the work than to the performance, which again was of the highest quality. Andsnes opened the first movement in intriguingly neutral fashion, having us wonder where it might lead. There was certainly a lightness to what immediately followed, underlining the vehemence that followed that, and so on. But ‘difference’ never seemed in retrospect to have been for the sake of it. From Teztlaff’s golden- or silver- or various other- hued violin line – no all-purpose ‘beauty’ here – to the twists, turns, and pedal points of the bass, in whichever part, this performance knew where it was heading. The spirit, and not just the scale, seemed to owe as much to Schubert as to Beethoven, which is surely right in this particular work. The second movement progressed similarly – yet in difference, with more than the occasional hint of Brahms’s Mozartian inheritance (highly welcome!) Nostalgia and distance seemed thereby evoked and dramatized, grief in response all the more heightened. In the third movement, tendencies from both predecessors seemed united, played off against one another: form here was dynamic, never a mere framework. The finale, taken attacca, sounded very much a finale (not always as evident a quality as one might expect). If the ghost of Beethoven had sometimes been placated, here he returned with a vengeance; he had never gone away.

 

The first movement of the Third, op.60 in C minor, registered a very different character from the outset. Internalised anger of an almost Webern-like concision, tension screwed up, at times almost unbearably: this was a performance (as it is a work) still more dialectical in quality. There was nothing appliqué to this terror: it emerged from musical necessity. Rhythm was the progenitor, at least at first, of the different character to the scherzo, as one might expect. Relative rhythmical relaxation was predicated upon what it was relaxing from. The changing relationship between piano and strings, the latter sometimes ‘led’ by Teztlaff, at other times in quite a different formation, proved a crucial element to the drama unfolding. The movement came to a close with such fury that it might almost have been the close of the work; except… The cello sonata-like opening to the Andante thus came as relief (not unlike the Andante to the Second Piano Concerto). Then a piano trio, in perfect balance; then the full quartet, transformed by experience, melancholy heightened. Again, the changing relationship between parts, between ensembles, was very much of the essence. In context, we heard the opening to the finale almost as part of an ‘additional’ violin sonata; in the hands of Andsnes and Teztlaff, how could it not, if only momentarily? So subtle were the entrances of viola and cello, one hardly noticed them. The intensity, emotional and intellectual, of what followed, could not, however, have been missed by anybody.

Prom 9 - MCO/Andsnes - Beethoven and Stravinsky, 23 July 2015

Royal Albert Hall

Beethoven – Piano Concerto no.1 in C major, op.15

Stravinsky – Apollo

Beethoven – Piano Concerto no.4 in G major, op.58

Leif Ove Andsnes (piano, director)

Mahler Chamber Orchestra 

Copyright: BBC/Chris Christodoulou

 

With this concert, Leif Ove Andsnes and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra opened a three-concert survey of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos (plus the Choral Fantasy) and works by Stravinsky. The First Piano Concerto opened in highly promising fashion, the tutti offering variegated sound and an already-clear sense of goal-orientation. Andsnes’s tempo was probably fast ‘objectively’ but sounded ‘right’. This was a smallish orchestra, but there was no smallness of ambition. The turn to the minor mode gave a transformation of character, not just of tonality. I could have done without rasping ‘natural’ trumpets and hard kettledrum sticks, although what seems to be an increasingly popular post-modernist melange of instruments could by the same token have been worse. Upon the pianist’s entry, we heard clear kinship with the early piano sonatas. Transitional passages brought commendable flexibility; indeed, throughout, it was the liminal passages, rightly, which most intrigued, harmonies both telling and questioning. Bubbly woodwind solos were, quite simply, a joy.

 

In the Largo, I missed a larger body of strings; the sublimity of a Beethoven slow movement seems to demand greater cushioning. Woodwind and piano, however, sounded as gorgeous as ever. Line was securely, meaningfully maintained throughout, in  movement we heard as if in one breath. For better and for worse, mostly but not entirely for better, this was definitely a post-Abbado performance of Beethoven. Now if only one could somehow combine the virtues of this with the best of Daniel Barenboim… The finale truly sounded as a finale, its post-Mozartian inheritance explored to great advantage. Yes, it was fast, but it breathed. Episodes, moreover, seemed to breathe yet more life into the movement, just as they should.

Stravinsky at his ‘whitest’ followed. I cannot quite follow the logic of the particular Beethoven and Stravinsky pairings, but no matter. Led from the violin by Matthew Truscott (his ever-stylish solos truly excellent), the MCO adopted an unusual seating-and-standing arrangement: cellos seated in a semi-circle, other strings standing around them. Apollo is not my least favourite Stravinsky work; I do not actively dislike it, as I do Orpheus. Yet, the work’s manifest virtues notwithstanding, I cannot dissent from Boulez’s observation about the neo-Classical Stravinsky (at least at his most extreme) having fallen into the intellectual quicksands of others. At any rate, this was a fine performance, with, at times, more than a hint of similarly ‘white’ balletic Prokofiev. (Now there is a ‘difficult’ relationship between composers.) There was a keen sense of narrative from the Prologue onwards, the return to the initial tempo in the ‘Birth of Apollo’ bringing transformation to the opening material in the light of what had passed in the Allegro section.

The Muses joined Apollo’s violin as if truly compelled. This was not a cold performance, far from it, but Stravinsky’s polemical froideur remaind, as did the ‘unreality’ of the almost bizarrely – and surely deliberately so – tonal music: Boulezian quicksand maybe, but interesting quicksand. The Muses’ variations were well characterised without excess. Polyrhymnia sounded vividly balletic; Terpsichore seemed almost to ‘split the difference’ between her two sisters. Apollo’s Variation benefited from splendidly rich string sound – more of that in Beethoven too, please! – with the god’s emphatic alterity there for all to hear. It was in the Apotheosis that we heard the strongest real echoes of the (French) Baroque, although difference was nevertheless maintained. I may ultimately find the Webernised Rameau of Agon (or is it vice versa?) more to my taste, but this still made its point. Beautifully sensitive playing proved just as variegated as had been the case in Beethoven.

It was to Beethoven we now returned, with perhaps the very greatest, and certainly the most lovable, of all his piano concertos: the Fourth. Andsnes’s opening phrase seemed to offer a piano ‘without hammers’. The orchestral response was subtle, full of life. I do not think this was a larger string section – I did not count the players – but it sounded fuller of tone. There was certainly a strong sense, again unexaggerated, of the Beethovenian sublime, and the MCO’s woodwind section proved as remarkable as ever. The piano’s second entry reminded us that this was, in every sense, a concerto, not a symphony. It may have been in many respects an intimate performance, but it did not feel scaled down. As for Andsnes’s trills, his passagework: they were truly to die for! The exultant moment of return was again subtle but no less powerful for that.

The strings in the Andante con moto seemed very much to have taken to heart the oft-repeated comparison to the Furies. But need they have been so brusque? Gluck’s Furies are not, or at least should not be. There was, however, an undoubtedly heightened contrast with the piano’s melting tone as Orpheus. Again, those trills! The finale seemed especially alert to its subdominant provenance and to the continuing tension between tonal centres. Others will again doubtless have been keener on the trumpets and hard sticks than I was. Rhythms were spruce. Above all, harmonic motion was understood and communicated, syncopations working their magic in tandem. And yes, once again, those trills! A couple of Bagatelles as encores (op.119 no.8 and op.33 no.7) had us longing for more.

 

Goerne/Andsnes - Mahler and Shostakovich, 7 January 2013

Wigmore Hall

Mahler – Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft

Shostakovich – Morning
Mahler – Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen
Shostakovich – Separation
Mahler – Es sungen drei Engel einen süßen Gesang; Das irdische Leben; Nun seh’ ich wohl, warum so dunkle Flammen; Wenn dein Mütterlein; Urlicht
Shostakovich – Night
Mahler – Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen
Shostakovich – Immortality; Dante
Mahler – Revelge
Shostakovich – Death
Mahler – Der Tambourg’sell

Matthias Goerne (baritone)

Leif Ove Andsnes (piano)

 

This was in almost all respects a distinguished recital, at least as much for Leif Ove Andsnes’s playing as for Matthias Goerne’s singing; indeed, had I to choose, I should say that Andsnes was on even better form, quite rightly seeming to have lavished just as much consideration on the recital as he would, had it been a solo performance. My sole cavil lay with the Shostakovich songs themselves. Perhaps an all-Mahler recital might have been a little too much, perhaps not; however, there would surely have been songs of a similar stature to have programmed with Mahler. It was an interesting idea, and in that respect, should be commended, to intersperse six songs from Shostakovich’s Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarotti, op.145, but the level of musical invention, as so often with this composer, was not high, leaving the songs, however well performed, to offer a degree of filling, even relief, rather than fully to complement Mahler.

 

The concert opened with a rare moment of relative optimism: the Rückert Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft. Andsnes’s introduction offered magical touch and an almost Boulezian clarity: it is, as with many of these songs, difficult not to think of the orchestra, but it is a tribute to Andsnes how fully he matched both pianistic and orchestral expectations. Bot artists imparted, even in this first song, a strong impression of wonder; there was no sense of warming up. Dissonance really bit upon the ‘Hand’ of ‘von lieber Hand’. Telling, true rubato – in the sense of robbed time rather than tempo modification – heightened the shaping of phrases. Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen benefited from a piano part so detailed, so evocative in performance that again, the orchestra was not missed at all; it almost seemed to be present, yet with an intimacy of scale that was the duo’s – and the Wigmore Hall’s – own. Goerne offered a variety of ‘voices’, whilst maintaining continuity. And a true spareness of writing emerged. In between those two Mahler songs came Shostakovich’s Morning: spare or merely empty? It sounded rather like Russian Britten (the note-spinning of a work such as Death in Venice). Goerne brought an apt parlando style of delivery to the recitative-like writing. The performance of Separation did its very best to rescue the song from generalised gloom.

 

It was striking to hear the Wunderhorn song, Es sungen drei Engel einen süßen Gesang as a song rather than as a movement of the Third Symphony – though it is well-nigh impossible to rid oneself of the memory not only of the orchestra but also of the boys’ choir. There was, though, a fine sense of dramatic narrative to the performance. Das irdische Leben was febrile, with an understated yet undeniably present fury, a terror emerging of which Shostakovich could at best only dream. Liszt and Wagner seemed very much influences upon the following two Rückert songs, Andsnes clearly relishing that Romantic harmonic background. He proved equally distinguished at laying bare Mahler’s musical processes, having Wenn die Mütterlein chill one’s bones all the more. It is no easy task to impart unity to the piano version of Urlicht, but Andsnes and Goerne experienced no problems whatsoever.

 

Andsnes evidently took as much care with the musical line of Shostakovich’s Night as he would have done with a solo work. He brought out the all-too-obvious ‘quirkiness’ of Immortality, and there could be no faulting strength or starkness in the performance from either artists of Death. It was always a relief, though, to return to Mahler. The musical line of Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen sounded as perfectly formed as that of a Beethoven slow movement, whilst rhythm and harmonic rhythm proved properly generative in Revelge. Goerne’s dark, furious vocal delivery stayed just (about) the right side of hectoring here. This seemed a far better response, albeit avant la lettre, to Michael Gove’s militaristic idiocy, than any I have yet heard. Der Tambourg’sell sounded especially arresting with piano, the drumrolls having more than a hint of Bartók (perhaps not coincidentally, an Andsnes speciality) to them. The bleakness of onward trudge and sepulchral close hung over the aspiring Hoffnung of the Beethovenian encore. As in the recital as a whole, there were no easy answers, perhaps no answers at all.

Andsnes - Beethoven, Bartók, Chopin and Liszt, 10 April 2013

Wigmore Hall

Beethoven – Piano Sonata no.22 in F major, op.54

Bartók – Suite, op.14
Beethoven – Piano Sonata no.28 in A major, op.101
Liszt – Pensée des morts, S 173/4
Chopin – Nocturne in C minor, op.48 no.1
Ballade no.4 in F minor, op.52

Leif Ove Andsnes (piano)

 

 

Let there be no doubt about it: Leif Ove Andsnes is a pianist and a musician of great distinction, and this was a recital of distinction. Beethoven’s op.54 sonata opened the programme, Andsnes’s tone and touch announced as being to die for. (There would prove no exception whatsoever to that.) The pianist captured to perfection Beethoven’s marriage of stylisation and human warmth; then came the still shocking canonic disjuncture. Control of line during the reprises of the minuet stood almost beyond praise, as did the meaning imparted to its progressive decoration. The second movement exhibited a rare kaleidoscopic quality – such light and shade! – throughout its moto perpetuo; tempo was strict, and yet the music breathed, rhythmic propulsion achieved without the slightest exaggeration. It was riveting from beginning to end.

 

Bartók’s op.14 Suite was granted a rare performance. The Allegretto showed a perfectly judged balance between insistence and flexibility, Andsnes’s voicing quite mesmerising. Much the same could be said of the scherzo, whose vivid theatricality evoked the world of The Wooden Prince and even, peering into the future, that of The Miraculous Mandarin. Neo-Lisztian diabolicism, albeit more ‘Hungarian’ in Bartók’s terms, was the hallmark of the Allegro molto third movement. Fullness of tone was never sacrificed to technical necessity. The final movement emerged beautifully from its predecessor, as seductive as Liszt and indeed as ‘suspended’ as anything from his late years. It was unsettled and unsettling in its almost Schoenbergian beauty.

 

A major, wrote William S. Porter, in his 1834 Musical Cyclopædia was ‘Golden, warm, and sunny. Its brilliant effect is shown in many passages of Haydn’s Creation.’ That spirit and perhaps still more that of Mozart in A major – think, for instance, of the great KV 488 piano concerto – was captured in the exquisite yet honest presentation of the first movement of Beethoven’s op.101 sonata. Except, of course, quite rightly, there was always a sense that Elysium was already unattainable, the tragedy of Beethoven. Syncopated chords tolled like ambivalent Mozartian bells of joy; here Beethoven, like Mozart, smiled through tears. Andsnes, without in the slightest sentimentalising the music, imparted to it a poignancy that hinted at Schubert, whilst retaining echt-Beethovenian quirkiness. The second movement offered contrast, but a dialectical contrast, connected even if one could not explicitly say how. ‘Melting precision’ was the somewhat paradoxical – or perhaps better, dialectical – phrase I summoned up to describe Andsnes’s performance, delivered with a lightly-worn rhythmic insistency that was indubitably generative. The trio integrated characteristics both from that march and from the first movement, its almost seraphic quality preparing the way for a third movement that spoke with the integrity and beauty of a Bach arioso. I wondered slightly about the tempo for the finale. Was it a shade too fast? What it perhaps lost in sublimity was gained in a Haydn-like sense of play, in context a perfectly valid alternative to the ‘finale problem’.

 

The second half opened with Liszt’s Pensées des morts. Mysterious, sepulchral, the ‘voice’ remained eloquent. There was nothing murky to the left-hand chords; one imagined that, like Liszt himself, it would simply not be possible for Andsnes to do other than elicit a beautiful tone from the instrument. Understanding and communication of harmonic rhythm were impeccable. It would be wonderful to hear more Liszt from him, perhaps the Sonata, the Années de pèlerinage, or indeed the rest of the Harmonies poétiques et réligieuses.

 

Chopin’s C minor Nocturne, op.48 no.1, was uneasy from the start, benefiting from a dramatic tension I have rarely heard here, tension apparently arising from the conjunction of well-chosen tempo – it is easy to take the piece too slowly – and voicing of the left-hand line. Cumulative power was awe-inspiring, the nocturne heard as if in a single breath. Chopin was granted dignity without sentimentality. The Fourth Ballade followed on in wonderfully ‘natural’ fashion, a splendid piece of programming. It spoke initially with a similar unforced eloquence, to which again a well-judged tempo and equally finely-judged rubato contributed. What ultimately I felt it lacked – and this was really my only disappointment of the evening – were the electricity that a great Chopin player such as Maurizio Pollini would impart to the work and a more revealing approach to voice-leading. Some avenues were smoothed out rather than brought into relief. Otherwise, however, I shall repeat myself in describing this as a recital of distinction.