Piemontesi, Schubert and Liszt, 9 May 2025

Wigmore Hall

Schubert: Fantasy in C major, D 605a, ‘Graz’
Schubert: Four Impromptus, D 935
Liszt: Piano Sonata in B minor, S 178

Francesco Piemontesi (piano)

  

Francesco Piemontesi offered a series of surprises, none unwelcome, in this fine Wigmore Hall recital of music by Schubert and Liszt. No piece was taken for granted, though by the same token, none was remoulded for the sake of remoulding. An array of possibilities was brought to life through exquisite command of touch and formidable foundation of intellect. 

The so-called ‘Graz’ Fantasy, D 605a, made for an excellent, even spellbinding opening. I was immediately put in mind of an observation by Donald Tovey on the piano music of Liszt, that it showed – irrespective of its musical quality – he was incapable of making an ugly sound on the keyboard.  Simple C major arpeggios sounded as if they were the rarest things in the world, the fifth bar’s flattened submediant piercing as perhaps only Schubert can. The first section as a whole emerged as something akin to a threshold for pianistic Romanticism, its fantasia quality, harking back to Mozart and beyond, in gradual self-revelation. The alla polacca music, in a typically distant – as distant as one can be – F-sharp major was delightfully quirky, dancing as if it were early Chopin. As the music became more involved, Piemontesi’s performance was never cluttered; here, as elsewhere, there was always space, irrespective of tempo, whose fundamental qualities always endured. The serenity with which opening material returned was deeply touching. 

The advent of the first of four impromptus, that in F minor, felt like the opening of a new chapter: not exactly presaged by the Fantasy, yet foretold. This was, of course, a different Schubert, from the close of his all-too-brief compositional life; and yet, without contrivance, it was also the same Schubert, similarly spun from the finest of Egyptian cotton, if that is not to undersell. There was something dream-like, though not too dream-like, to the piece’s progression, to the emergence of music that had somehow always been there, waiting simply to be voiced as a song without words. Its ambivalence and the pain of return to the tonic could hardly have been more movingly conveyed. Perhaps the second impromptu, the A-flat Allegretto, was a little understated, a little too innig; or perhaps that was simply a matter of taste. There was no doubting its lyricism, nor that of the B-flat theme and variations, Piemontesi’s disinclination to make a meal of it welcome. Subtlety of melodic line, the telling quality of lilt and breath, and the ‘natural’ quality to this music-making, not least in the unexaggerated pathos of the fourth variation, all proved telling. One can overdo the ‘sonata’ designation to these pieces; if Schubert had intended them as such, he would doubtless have said so. Nonetheless, the fourth, returning to F minor, felt very much like a finale: one that foretold Brahms still more than Liszt, taking its leave nonetheless from the world of the Moments musicaux. 

In the introduction to Liszt’s B minor Sonata, Piemontesi seemed determined to show – more to the point, he did – that preconceived oppositions are worth no more than the ether into which they are typed. This music can be taut and rhetorical, if one so chooses, and will most probably benefit from such integrative performance. At any rate, it provided quite the launch pad for the exposition proper, whose initial combination of fury and rhythmic insistence sounded new, not to be compared to previous ‘schools’ of performance. Throughout, decisions that initially had me wonder provided their own confirmation, for instance the continued insistent quality for the coming of the second group. Though on a considerably grander scale, the work in context nonetheless emerged as a mercurial, sulphurous successor to the Schubert Fantasy—not that Liszt could have known it, undiscovered until 1962. Yet its concision truly told too, Liszt’s Beethovenian side inevitably revealing itself amidst, indeed through, the grandiloquence. Again, there was no sense of being rushed; time seemed almost to stand still prior to the fugato, which verily bolted, preparing the way inevitably for return. The (certain) uncertainty in aftershock was not the least surprise in what felt like a symphonic poem for, certainly not reduced to, piano. 

Two encores, both again welcome surprises, were a lively account Wilhelm Kempff’s transcription of Bach’s Chorale Prelude, ‘Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme,‘ BWV 645, which built magnificently, and a delectable response in ‘Au lac de Wallenstadt’ from Liszt’s first (Swiss) book of Années de pèlerinage.

Angela Hewitt - Bach and Beethoven, 2 October 2012

Royal Festival Hall

 

Bach – Chorale Prelude: ‘Nun komm’ der Heiden Heiland,’ BWV 659, arr. Wilhelm Kempff

Bach – Siciliano in G minor from Flute Sonata, BWV 1031, arr. Kempff
Bach – Sinfonia in D major from Cantata no.29, ‘Wir danken dir, Gott,’ arr. Kempff
Beethoven – Piano Sonata no.28 in A major, op.101
Bach – The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080: Contrapunctus I – Contrapunctus X
 

Not wishing to be typecast as a ‘Bach pianist’ is quite understandable, though if ever there were a composer in whose music one could satisfyingly immerse oneself for ever and a day it would surely be Johann Sebastian. ‘Specialist’ seems an utter misnomer, given that we are dealing with the most universal composer of all, not that those who would reduce Bach to the status of a generic Baroque composer have the faintest inkling of that. Angela Hewitt’s repertoire has of course always ranged beyond Bach. On the evidence, however, of this recital, the first in this season’s International Piano Series, her Beethoven – admittedly a fearsomely difficult choice in the guise of op.101 – is not or at least not yet on the same level as her Bach, which itself has over recent years gained greater depth. (Click here for a review of Hewitt performing Book One of the Forty-Eight.)

 

There was much to admire in the Beethoven sonata, the first two movements proving the most successful. Indeed, the first movement, Etwas lebhaft und mit der innigsten Empfindungen – how utterly different such instructions sound in German from the usual Italian, and how different is their meaning! – struck an almost ideal balance between apparent reverie and structural communication. Beethoven’s syncopations both disoriented and comforted. The March was strong, rhythmically alert, ceding once again to dreams in the trio, though only apparently so, the trilling transition back equally impressive. In the finale, again, the transitional passages – however over-used a word it may be, ‘liminal’ seems almost to be demanded here – were magical. However, the fugal writing, perhaps surprisingly given Hewitt’s Bachian experience, came off less well. Or rather, perhaps unsurprisingly, given that Beethoven is doing something quite different in this case. As if trying too hard to summon up a Beethovenian spirit, the music hardened rather than raged, sounding brittle rather than Romantic. Or was that to be ascribed to Hewitt’s Fazioli piano? Might a Bösendorfer or Steinway have provided greater depth? At any rate, white heat of development, without which the sonata principle cannot function, was fitful.

 

The three Wilhelm Kempff transcriptions had in a sense told a similar story in miniature. Nun komm’, der Heiden Heiland was beautifully voiced, noble in spirit, though there were occasions when I felt Hewitt – much to my surprise – bent the rhythms a little too much, sacrificing momentum. The Siciliano from BWV 1031 was limpid, quite magical, an object lesson in Bach playing, hyphenated or otherwise. However, the Sinfonia from BWV 29 – again to my surprise – sounded at times somewhat brutalised, tone hardening whilst at the same time being over-pedalled. A less breathless tempo might have helped, though I also wondered both whether the piece simply lent itself less well to piano transcription and again whether a mellower instrument might have assisted.

 

Reservations, such as they were, evaporated in the second half, in which Hewitt performed Contrapuncti I-X from The Art of Fugue. I could only wish that we had heard the work in its entirety. Her tone was expertly chosen, or rather did not seem ‘chosen’ at all, sounding utterly natural in response to the music. Bach’s endless reserves of imagination and intellect were at one. As the fugues progressed, one always had the sense that the world was his oyster; yet, looking, or hearing, back, one knew equally well that things could not have been other than they were. The first four fugues sounded very much as a group, Bach’s contrapuntal means and learning audible and meaningful, whether or no any particular listener would be able to put into words, let alone technical terms, what he was doing. In the stretto fugues and their successors, pace – whatever, if anything, that might mean – seemed to increase, Romantic ‘expression’ to deepen. The French Overture rhythms of Contrapunctus VI were beautifully handled; in Bach, ‘ornament’ is never really anything of the kind. No wonder Schoenberg revered him inordinately; his friend Adolf Loos’s criminalisation of ornament, so meaningful for Schoenberg himself, might as well have been derived from these fugues, harbingers of a searching modernism that would extend to the Domaine musical, to Darmstadt, and beyond. Yet pianistic beauty was never sacrificed to structural rigour; the two went hand in hand. Kempff’s transcription of Orpheus's Lament and the Dance of the Blessed Spirits from Gluck’s Orfeo – strictly, from his Orphée – made for a delectable, slightly unexpected, choice of encore.