Last night was pianist Leif Ove Andsnes’ seventh appearance under the auspices of San Francisco Performances but only his third as a solo recitalist. San Francisco has appreciated his skills as an accompanist with violinist Christian Tetzlaff on three occasions, and most recently he accompanied tenor Ian Bostridge in 2004. Last night he returned to Herbst Theatre with a program of curious juxtapositions of the solo repertoire.
Those juxtapositions were most evident during the first half of the evening. The second half focused entirely on Frédéric Chopin. Now that we have all survived the excesses in programming for the Chopin bicentennial year, it is time to get back to programs that offer his music with a point of view, rather than just for the sake of displaying it. Andsnes’ point of view amounted to presenting Chopin under two different lights, almost to suggest that, like Robert Schumann (who was born in the same year as Chopin), his character had both a Florestan and a Eusebius side. Thus, of the seven selections, four were waltzes (Florestan), followed by a more introspective (Eusebius) sampling of two ballades and one nocturne.
Any attempt to play a Chopin waltz for a room full of dancers would undermine everything Chopin brought to the composition of these relatively short pieces. Nevertheless, the spirit of the waltz is always present; and, if they were to be danced at all, it would have to be to the steps of a choreographer (I cannot, for the life of me, imagine anyone other than Michel Fokine) who could appreciate just how much Chopin could play with the three-beat meter without ever disrupting the underlying waltz rhythm. This is most evident in the Opus 42 A-flat major waltz (which concluded Andsnes’ set of four), which sways with all of the necessary waltz-like qualities while its first theme proceeds blithely along in two-beat meter.
Andsnes captured all of those qualities delightfully, not only in Opus 42 but also in the three Opus 70 waltzes that preceded it. Most importantly, he captured the sensuality of Chopin’s rhythms, evoking all of those erotic factors that made the waltz so scandalous (physical contact, you know) when it was first introduced. The result was that, rather than simply appreciating what a waltz could be, through Andsnes we on audience side could appreciate Chopin’s appreciation of the waltz form.
On the more introspective side the nocturne (Opus 62, Number 1, in B major) was the most enigmatic. One wonders whether or not Chopin had been inspired by the unsettling rhetoric of Joseph Haydn’s orchestral introduction to The Creation, representing the chaos that existed before “in the beginning.” Phrases play out in varying lengths and never seem to resolve themselves with the requisite “punctuation marks.” As a performer Andsnes approached this score in the only way one can, by giving a clear account of what Chopin set down on paper, using basic knowledge of grammar to sort out all of those notes into foreground and background. This nocturne does not receive very much performance, which is probably just as well; but with Andsnes it could enjoy treatment from the best of hands.
The nocturne was flanked by two ballades, Opus 47 in A-flat major (the third) and Opus 23 in G minor (the first). It is important to remember that these are also triple-meter pieces, 6/4 in Opus 23 and 6/8 in Opus 47. Like the Opus 42 waltz, they are compositions that explore the ways in which three-beat and two-beat rhythms can play off each other. These were the most extended works of the Chopin set, and each leads the listener through a diverse variety of evocative domains. One might almost say that, for these compositions, Andsnes served more as a tour guide than a virtuoso soloist; but, from that point of view, there was one occasional weakness. As many such guides tend to linger in their favorite places, Andsnes would occasionally allow the pulse to slow down significantly to allow such lingering over a particular turn of phrase. This can be taken as a particular approach to expressiveness, but it could also be taken as applying a microscope to that with could just as easily be detected by the unassisted eye.
There was a bit of that lingering at the beginning of the program. Andsnes began the evening with the Hoboken XVI/20 C minor sonata by Joseph Haydn. This opens with a Moderato movement that is subtly exploring departures from usual sonata conventions. Early in the movement the Moderato pulse slows down for an adagio cadenza, followed by a slow unfolding of tenute suspensions, culminating in a fermata before the tempo is restored. To say that Andsnes chose to linger on that fermata would border on understatement. Aesthetically, he may have wished us to experience a time-standing-still moment; but that approach did not make for a particularly good fit to the rest of Haydn’s logic. My own feeling is that Haydn was being a bit prankish in playing with the tempo, while Andsnes was being excessively serious. The result was a bit of a jolt to the Haydn spirit of the entire sonata, but it was clearly a consistent reading on Andsnes’ part.
That spirit of prankishness was more evident in Andsnes’ reading of Béla Bartók’s Opus 14 suite in four movements. It is easy to appreciate Bartók’s approach to virtuosity, particularly when the piano is involved; but he seems so serious in most of the photographs we have of him that it is hard to imagine him smiling while at a keyboard. By contrast there is a joyousness to the first three movements of this suite and a comforting sense of an ending to the final Sostenuto. Andsnes’ account of this score seemed to recognize these upbeat qualities and offer them with the clarity they deserved.
Clarity was also key to his execution of the three pieces of the first book of Claude Debussy’s Images. The music of “Reflets dans l’eau” (reflections in the water) is as evocative as the text of the title. Every note that Debussy penned contributes to this musical imagery with the same precision one encounters in Impressionist brushwork, and Andsnes knew exactly how to honor that precision. The same can be said of the machine-like intensity of “Mouvement,” which came across as a celebration of perpetual motion. As one who has enjoyed many opportunities to both listen to and play the music of Jean-Philippe Rameau, I have never quite figured out just where the “homage” is in the “Hommage à Rameau” movement. My guess is that Debussy was trying to evoke the spirit of that eighteenth-century period without much attentiveness to either musical or historical reinforcement. The result is a highly effective mood piece, which, like the other two Debussy selections, enjoyed the clarity of Andsnes’ sense of focus.
Andsnes offered two encores following the Chopin half of the evening. He decided that one more waltz would be in order and selected the first of the two “Grande Valse Brillante” pieces in Opus 34, the one in A-flat major. Then, to maintain the spirit of the dance, he concluded the evening with a performance of the fifth of Enrique Granados’ 1890 collection of twelve Spanish dances, “Andaluza” (also called “Playera”). This made for a spirited conclusion to a journey through considerable diversity of repertoire.
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