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St. Mary's Anglican Church
October 14, 2016
In the nineteenth century — and, indeed, for much of the twentieth — there were three things which everybody "knew" about Franz Liszt: he was a destroyer of pianos, no woman was safe with him, and he was, like Paganini before him, in league with the devil.
Of course only the first of these is true (and, in this, he was following in the line of "pianoclasts" founded by Beethoven); Liszt's love-life would scarcely raise an eyebrow today and if, as Nietzsche said, God is dead, then clearly the last cannot be true either.
That having been said, there is still plenty of the diabolical in Liszt's piano music, whether the directly infernally referential or simply the technically challenging.
And while it is generally acknowledged that, technically speaking, most working pianists today are far more competent than their predecessors, due in no small part to the innovations introduced by Liszt himself, there are still remarkably few capable of playing his music with both the technique and sheer unmitigated panâche which it requires.
On the basis of the second half of his recital last Friday, Marco Grieco is clearly one of this happy band, casting aside the ferocious challenges of three of Liszt's most extravagantly extravert works.
The "Dante Sonata" is the longest piece in Book II of the Années de Pelerinage (Deuxième année: Italie), its full title being Après une lecture de Dante: Fantasia Quasi Sonata. Its music is divided between a portrayal of the anguish of souls in Hell — in D minor, like much of Liszt's music in a similar mood, such as the Inferno movement of the "Dante" Symphony or Totentanz — and the depiction of the joy of those in Heaven, a chorale-like theme in F sharp major — Liszt's key of more spiritually-uplifting music, such as the Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude or Les Jeux d'eaux à la Villa d'Este. (As Alan Walker notes in his magnificent three-volume biography, there is still work to be done in the area of Liszt's association of specific keys with specific moods.) There is also much use made, in the infernal music, of the "tritone" (augmented fourth or diminished fifth) also known as the "Diabolus in Musica".
Grieco gave a tremendously virtuosic performance of the sonata. The ominous, arresting opening put the audience on notice that, to quote Bette Davis, it was "going to be a bumpy ride" and his playing had the requisite sense of abandon at the climaxes. For the more beatific F sharp music he summoned forth some lovely tones, although the listener was never in any doubt which particular aspects of Dante had made the biggest impression on the composer.
Liszt composed four Mephisto Waltzes in all (as well as — the mind veritably boggles — a Mephisto Polka). The first is by some way the best-known, with its subtitle Der Tanz in der Dorfschenke (The Dance in the Village Inn) and is based on an episode from Lenau's — not Goethe's — Faust, in which Mephistopheles and Faust enter a village inn in which there is a wedding feast taking place; Faust dances off with a local beauty while Mephistopheles plays the fiddle.
Again Grieco was suitably demonic and his hands at times were a mere blur; on occasion his left hand seemed to dominate and the melody became somewhat submerged, but I am quite prepared to level the blame at the acoustic and possibly the piano itself. It was a tremendously exciting performance.
During the nineteenth century there was much arrangement of orchestral and other large-scale music for piano — and, more often, piano duet — in order to make it available for domestic consumption.
Liszt's operatic paraphrases were emphatically not so intended; indeed, at the time of their composition, probably only the composer himself had the ability to play them.
It was with the Rigoletto Paraphrase that Grieco closed his recital; and I would like to say how gratifying it is that on the programme this was not denoted as "Verdi-Liszt" or "Verdi (arr. Liszt)", for really Verdi only supplied the melodies and the paraphrases truly are compositions by Liszt.
Again Grieco played the music to the hilt, his rapidfire repeated notes being particularly impressive, and the recital definitely ended "with a bang".
Ended officially, that is, for he once again showed us the more inward side of his pianistic nature with his encore, a nocturne by Chopin, exquisitely played.
The first half of Grieco's recital was, shall we say? "interesting", consisting of music by three composers quite different from Liszt: Bach, Beethoven and Chopin.
In the case of Beethoven's Sonata Op.31 No.2, known as the "Tempest", although not by its composer, I would suggest that Grieco offered rather more in the way of poetry than structure. Few would have guessed that each of the three movements is in sonata form.
In many ways the opening movement should not have worked, with its fierce tempo changes and excessive rubato, yet somehow, so concentrated was Grieco's playing, it did. It certainly held the attention, despite the hammering of the rain on the church roof, which seemed to be attempting to make that "Tempest" connection for us.
The dynamics in the slow movement were excellent, with big climaxes and consolation afterwards. And despite the fact that few, if any, today really believe Schindler's claim that Beethoven was inspired by Shakespeare's play, the close of this music did bring to mind Prospero's "we are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep".
The last movement I found the least convincing, with Grieco seemingly unable to settle on a single principal tempo.
Busoni's arrangement of Bach's chorale prelude "Nunn Komm der Heiden Heiland" was played with very free tempos indeed. However the contemplative aspects of the music were very well captured and, once again and in spite of one's preconceptions, the performance worked.
It was with the final work of the first half, though, Chopin's Scherzo No.2, that Grieco began to show us where his heart truly lies, with the Romantics.
As with the Liszt pieces, his playing seemed perfectly attuned to the music, with some quite lovely tone colours and a very natural-sounding rubato which was actually less emphatic than in either the Bach or Beethoven which preceded it.
Grieco is a more-than-interesting pianist and this was a splendid opening to Oak Bay Music's new season.
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