The primary focus of Thomas Schultz’ piano recital yesterday afternoon in the Old First Concerts series at Old First Church was the first half of the nineteenth century, with particular attention to the mature voices of three composers, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, and Robert Schumann. Schultz clearly has a personal interest in this period, but he has just as much interest in the contemporary repertoire. Thus, his program also included a recent work by Korean composer (now living in the United States) Hyo-shin Na, which offered its own rather different take on this idea of “voice.”
The program began with Beethoven’s Opus 126 collection of six bagatelles, composed between 1823 and 1824. The latter year is the focus of Harvey Sachs’ rather disappointing exercise in hero-worship, The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824. Fortunately, Schultz was more interested in the merits of these six short works than in their imposing historical context (which also includes Beethoven 33 variations on Anton Diabelli’s little waltz, his Opus 120). Most important may be the almost destabilizing approach Beethoven takes to rhythm, not only in how the tempos alternate from one bagatelle to the next but also in the way conflicting rhythms intrude upon each other within the relatively brief duration of a single bagatelle. Schultz performed with just the right level of sensitivity to these rhythmic eccentricities, never exaggerating them but always making it clear that Beethoven was exploring an untraveled (and slightly scary) path.
The rest of the first half of the program was devoted to two rather short Schubert works, neither of which was published in his lifetime. The first was the D. 915 allegretto in C minor, written into the album of his friend Ferdinand Walcher on April 27, 1827, as an “au revoir present” prior to Walcher’s trip to Venice. The second was the first of the D. 946 collection of three pieces, called “impromptus” in Otto Erich Deutsch’s catalog but first published as “three piano pieces” in 1868 (having been edited anonymously by Johannes Brahms). Deutsch dates these from May of 1828, making them further indicators of Schubert’s prodigious efforts in his final year. Schultz’ selection followed the ternary form of Schubert’s earlier impromptus, an Allegro assai in E-flat minor with a trio in B major. If the Beethoven bagatelles offered an erratic journey through rhythmic patterns, Schubert’s piece was equally adventurous in its shifts of tonal focus. D. 915, on the other hand, was relatively straightforward in its harmony but offered several clever rhetorical turns of phrase in its rhythmic treatment of the melody. Here, again, Schultz honored each of the factors that made both of these pieces compelling listening without holding any of those factors under a magnifying glass.
The intermission was followed by a performance of Na’s “Sea Wind.” This composition received its first performance in an Old First Concerts recital that Schultz gave almost exactly a year ago. It is a fantasy on a song by the Chilean poet Victor Jara, “Angelita Huenuman;” but the fabric of embellishment is so rich that the music assumes its own characteristic identity, quite distinct from its Chilean roots. Jara was one of the victims executed after the coup, with American sympathy if not support, that overthrew Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. However, “Sea Wind” is decidedly not a political piece but simply an extended lyric meditation given an affectionate reading by Schultz.
The remainder of the second half of the program was devoted to Robert Schumann, the principal portion going to his rather late (Opus 82, composed between 1848 and 1849) Forest Scenes (Waldscenen). These were inspired by both paintings and poems drawing upon the “nature worship” of the German Romantic movement. The work is cyclic in that the concluding “Farewell” movement offers a few fragmentary allusions to the principal theme of the opening “Entrance” movement. Schultz’ approach to this collection was serious and capable, but it seemed to lack the sharp edges of expressiveness that made his Beethoven and Schubert selections so characteristically fascinating.
There was a bit more bite to his conclusion, the Opus 7 toccata. In the context of Forest Scenes having been inspired by German poetry and painting, I could not help but wonder whether Schumann had ever encountered William Blake. There is a degree to which the unrelenting drive of this toccata evokes the “dark Satanic Mills” of Blake’s “Jerusalem;” and the dates are such that Schumann could have been aware of this poem when he began work on Opus 7. Whether or not Blake influenced Schumann, Schultz definitely performed the toccata with a Satanic quality that far more effectively presented the dramatic side of Schumann’s rhetoric than the Forest Scenes did.
Comments