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.

Marwood/Fröst/Hamelin - Schubert, Debussy, Stravinsky, Poulenc, and Bartók, 28 February 2014

Wigmore Hall

Schubert – Rondo in B minor, D 895

Debussy – Première rapsodie
Stravinsky – L’Histoire du soldat: suite for violin, clarinet, and piano
Poulenc – Clarinet Sonata
Debussy – Violin Sonata in G minor
Bartók – Contrasts

Anthony Marwood (violin)

Martin Fröst (clarinet)

Marc-André Hamelin (piano)

In many ways, this proved an enjoyable recital – once past the opening Schubert Rondo in B minor. I cannot imagine what possessed the musicians to include it. Quite apart from the lack of connection with an otherwise twentieth-century programme, it is a weak piece, whose revival does the composer no favours whatsoever. It might have been made to work with a compelling performance; here both Marc-André Hamelin and Anthony Marwood sounded decidedly out of sorts, displaying little chemistry. Hamelin struggled to conjure a plausibly Schubertian piano tone, often sounding harsh, his opening chords – and their repetition – almost ludicrously so. And goodness, this piece overstays its welcome: its lengths are anything but 'heavenly'.

 

With Debussy’s Première rapsodie, we entered a different world in every respect. Hamelin set up the piece well in terms of opening sonority, suspense, and seductiveness. Martin Fröst – here as elsewhere, undoubtedly the star of the evening – offered beguiling clarinet tone and subtly telling phrasing. Rubato was well judged; indeed, the performance as a whole sounded wonderfully effortless. Hamelin sounded by turns languorous and nimble, whilst Fröst showed the truth of the adage that technique is the liberation of the imagination, his account of the clarinet part as sexy as that of the slinkiest saxophonist.

 

Stravinsky’s suite for the three instruments of movements from The Soldier’s Tale has sometimes come in for adverse criticism. I cannot imagine why; it works very well, and certainly did so in this performance. Throughout the players, especially Hamelin, offered an excellent onward, motoric tread. Marwood seemed far better attuned to this music than to Schubert, properly capturing the weird expressiveness of Stravinsky’s decidedly eccentric writing for the violin. Fröst’s high notes in the ‘Marche du soldat’ proved nicely menacing, his coolness in ‘Le Violon du soldat’ a proper foil to that violin. Not for the first time, I thought of jazz, both the similarity and also the very real differences. The ‘Petit concert’ was brilliantly evocative; one could almost see the original ‘show’. Well-characterised dances followed, leading us into the closing ‘Danse du diable’, a frenetic heir to the Rite as well as neo-classical precursor. It teemed, as it were, with alienated and damaged life.

 

Following the interval, Fröst and Hamelin offered a fine account of Poulenc’s Clarinet Sonata, full of dark, at first understated energy. The first movement’s typical sudden shifts of mood were handled well, likewise the general ebb and flow. Both players offered quite breathtaking hushed playing. Ultimately, quite rightly, the composer’s serious side emerged as victor. Even when predictable, as sometimes it is, the slow movement remained lovable. Again, it was perhaps the quiet intensity that was most impressive. The finale was razor-sharp, yet playful.

 

The Debussy G minor Violin Sonata followed. Again, the opening piano chords announced a very different voice: cooler, yes, but in an Isadora Duncan-like, faux Grecian manner. That, however, would be to overlook the vigour and passion of what would come. Especially in the first two movements, we were in no doubt as to the broad range of expression Debussy summons up through, rather than despite, his late classicism. The ‘Intermède’ was sprightly, yet the players knew also when to relax. However, there was perhaps a little too much of the plain-spoken to the finale, which lacked in fantasy.

 

Finally, Bartók’s Contrasts, which once again brought all three players together. The opening twists and turns, of which there are many, were convincingly communicated. In this ‘Verbunkos’, Fröst again emerged as primus inter pares, a proper heir to Benny Goodman. Structure and expressive means continued to be conveyed as one in ‘Pihenő’. I mean no disrespect to Hamelin to say that some of the most revealing moments were those in which the piano fell silent; it is rather a tribute to Bartók’s extraordinary imagination. The final ‘Sebes’ was viscerally exciting, wanting nothing in agility. It shared the virtues of its predecessors with a wildness that was entirely its own.

 

Marc-André Hamelin piano recital, Wigmore Hall, 5 October 2008

Wigmore Hall

Haydn – Piano sonata in B minor, Hob.XVI:32
Chopin – Piano sonata no.3 in B minor, op.58
Debussy – Préludes: Book II

Marc-André Hamelin (piano)

The name of C.P.E. Bach occurred to me more than once during Marc-André Hamelin’s performance of Haydn’s marvellous B minor sonata. I subsequently discovered a guarded comparison between Emanuel Bach and Haydn in Misha Donat’s programme notes, so it seems that he, the pianist, and even your humble reviewer were thinking along similar lines – in my case, it must be said, as a result of Hamelin’s performance. Hamelin presented the sonata with some of the exaggerations that characterise the boundary between the Baroque and the Classical. The dynamic contrasts and use of the sustaining pedal were unashamedly Romantic but there were also numerous instances of late Baroque mannerism, not least in terms of the crushed ornamentation. It was rather as if Glenn Gould were being crossed with Mikhail Pletnev or even, given the sometimes chocolate-like tone, with Evgeny Kissin. I wondered whether the agogic exaggeration in statements of the first movement’s first subject would become merely irritating but it did not; instead, it heightened the sense of characterisation. This movement was taken quite fast for an Allegro moderato yet the tempo worked. Hamelin took the second repeat, adding to the distancing from the Classical period proper. The following major-mode minuet sounded duly Classical, almost Mozartian, yet also perhaps just the slightest touch empty, as if Hamelin were eager to return to the Sturm und Drang of B minor, which he did in the vehement trio. I wondered whether the Presto finale was a shade too fast, but Haydn’s marking is after all presto. Hamelin took it as a moto perpetuo, which swept all before it – all, that is, save for the slightly heavy-handed repeated notes at the outset, a problem that soon righted itself. His octaves were an object lesson in style and projection.

We remained in B minor for Chopin’s third piano sonata. I was not sure that Hamelin quite had the measure of this work as a whole, although his performance certainly boasted splendid aspects. It was almost as if the music were too easy (!) for such a super-virtuoso. In the first movement, we were treated to a melting second subject, on its first and subsequent appearances, but its predecessor was just a little straightforward. That said, there was a fine sense of musical transformation when it came to the recapitulation. Needless to say, any technical challenges were readily surmounted. The scherzo was a definite instance in which the music sounded a little too ‘easy’ for the pianist. There was a sense of him gliding over its musical substance. The trio appeared to benefit through its lack of virtuosity. Hamelin presented a ruminative yet nevertheless developmental Largo, with a fine sense of the barcarolle later on, although some of the earlier material sounded a touch matter of fact. The finale was impressively virtuosic, which is not to say emptily so, although, like sections of the third movement, it sometimes veered dangerously close to Rachmaninov. I wondered whether Hamelin would have been happier more at home performing Alkan.

Debussy seemed to speak more readily to this pianist, as we heard in the second book of Préludes. The veiled quality of Brouillards sounded spot on, followed by exquisite voicing in Feuilles mortes – that in a piece one would not necessarily have thought most lent itself to such ‘Romantic’ treatment. Its music was certainly heard ‘without hammers’ – likewise in Canape – and with fine use of the sustaining pedal. La puerta del vino suffered from a heavy-handed opening – repeated upon re-visitation of the opening material – but the piece was characterised more generally by a fine sense of insistent rhythm and exotic danger. La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune benefited from a nicely mysterious opening, the mood continuing throughout Hamelin’s performance. There was an interesting hint of an almost Brahmsian waltz rhythm at times. Not every prelude was equally successful. Bruyères, for instance, was well executed but a little plain. ‘General Lavine’ – excentric captured the eccentric aspect well but primary colours were a little too much to the fore elsewhere. Les Tierces alternées sounded a little too close to the parodic style Debussy had employed in Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum; again, I wondered if its technical challenges were not great enough. But in the final Feux d’artifice, post-Lisztian pyrotechnics were undoubtedly appropriate; Hamelin’s glissando was simply jaw-dropping. Despite certain reservations, then, this was in many respects an estimable account. I suspect that the audience would have been treated to an encore or two but this must remain mere suspicion on my part since, unfortunately, I had to leave immediately.