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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
November 24, 2014
According to Charles Rosen, the attempts to "open up" sonata form in the second quarter of the nineteenth century "took two basically related directions". The first of these was the "cyclical sonata" in which "each movement is based on a transformation of the themes of the others...thematic relations among different movements of a sonata may be of two kinds: implicit and explicit...An astonishing example of the explicit form occurs in Schubert's Piano Sonata in A major, D.959...[whose] finale closes with a free cancrizan version of the opening". ("Cancrizans" means "walking backwards" and is mediaeval Latin; the term "retrograde" is also used.)
It is, I believe, a measure of Arthur Rowe's performance of this sonata, which comprised the first half of Monday's recital, that the relationship between the work's opening and close was made clearer than I can ever recall hearing before.
From the commanding opening passage to that "cancrizan" close, Rowe gave a profound and moving performance, clad in beautiful tone colours and bringing out details which one does not normally hear.
The slow movement, in particular, with its ominous tread, not only referred back to the corresponding movement of the "Great" C major symphony, it also seemed to hint at future developments by Alkan (in his Concerto for solo piano) and even Mahler.
The scherzo was playful but there was definitely an edginess to the music. The finale's glorious melody and its filigree decorations were an absolute delight although, once again, the music is "smiling through the tears" and the underlying melancholy was inescapable.
The second method of opening up sonata form, in Rosen's reckoning, was "the combination of a one-movement and four-movement structure into one amalgam". Most people cite Schubert's "Wanderer" Fantasy as the primeval example, although Rosen points to the finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. He concurs with the majority, though, in accepting Liszt's B minor sonata as "perhaps the most famous example".
It was with the B minor Sonata that Rowe closed his recital - a term which Liszt himself was the first to use to describe a solo performance - in an absolutely mesmerising performance which made light of the work's manifold technical difficulties: Liszt not only has the reputation of the greatest pianist in history (a premise which can never be confirmed until somebody invents a time machine), he also invented vast swathes of the modern pianist's technical armoury.
One could almost write a thesis on pianism based on recordings of this sonata alone - the oldest performance I have is a 1905 piano roll by Liszt's pupil Arthur Friedheim, the most recent from April of this year by Peter Donohoe. (There are a few exceptions among major pianists, perhaps the most notable being Artur Schnabel who, as far as I am aware, never performed any Liszt at all.)
Rowe's account was certainly worthy of mention in the same breath as any of them. To be sure, there were a few fluffed notes, but one wonders whether the composer himself could have played the entire work note-perfect, and these were not even minor blemishes on a performance of enormous power and perception, a performance more than worth the effort of turning out on a gloomy November evening.
List's output for his own instrument was extraordinary - after having recording some ninety (sic) CDs of his complete piano music, Leslie Howard's investigations in the archive in Weimar turned up enough unpublished music for another four CDs worth - and, for the other work in his programme, Rowe chose one of his best-known pieces: Benediction de Dieu dans la Solitude, number three of his Harmonies poétiques et religieuses.
Again Rowe gave a dazzling performance, with exquisite control of dynamics and, once again, a gorgeous tonal palette.
One can only hope that it is not another four years before Rowe gives a recital on his home turf; this was an evening to treasure.
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