MiV Home
First Unitarian Church
June 4, 2017
"It sometimes seems to me as if I did not belong to this world at all."
The quote is, admittedly, only attributed to Schubert, yet it has an undoubted ring of truth to it, particular when listening to his late music.
We have a total of eight impromptus by Schubert, although he did not initially use the term himself; it was his publisher, Tobias Haslinger, who attached the term to the first set — or, to be precise, the first two of the first set — when they became one of the few works published during Schubert's lifetime, as Op.90. (The other two had to wait until 1857 for publication.)
The second set, which Schubert did call impromptus, was not published until 1839, over a decade after Schubert's death, as Op.142, although both sets are now usually referred to by their numbers in Otto Deutsch's catalogue, D.899 and D.935 respectively. Schubert himself seems probably to have considered the four impromptus of D.935 as a continuation of D.899, as he originally numbered them five to eight. Which would seem to be another reason to dismiss the claims of Robert Schumann and Alfred Einstein that D.935 is a four-movement sonata in disguise; their subsidiary claim, that Schubert allowed the four pieces to be called impromptus and published separately to increase their sales potential also seems decidedly unlikely in the light of their delayed publication, not to mention his letter to Schott's in which he actually uses the term himself.
It was with D.935 that Jan Lisiecki closed the official part of his excellent recital which opened the 2017 Eine Kleine Summer Music series.
From the opening of the first impromptu — framed as a less peremptory, more insinuating gesture than one often hears — it was clear that we were in for something special. In that first impromptu Lisiecki combined a superb feel for light and shade with a tremendous power; and I'm sure he summoned forth from the piano tone colours of which it was unaware that it was capable.
The second impromptu opens with a typically Schubertian melody, full of repeated notes, that, coming from any other pen, would sound somehow less. Lisiecki imbued it with rich tones and great poise; as so often with late Schubert, one perforce wonders how something so simple can yet be so deep.
Of the delightful theme-and-variations that constitute the third impromptu any vestige of objectivity deserts me: this was used as the theme music for BBC Radio Three's "Music Week" every Sunday morning during my formative musical years and the first few notes inevitably transport me back to those times. In Lisiecki's hands it was pure magic.
The final impromptu is the most virtuosic of the four; Lisiecki plunged into it at a very quick, almost impetuous tempo; the central section, by contrast, possessed an almost Mozartean classicism in his hands; while the recapitulation, taken at a somewhat less breakneck speed than the opening, brought his recital to a dramatic and powerful close.
For an encore, Lisiecki gave a luminous account of Träumerei from Schumann's Kinderszenen, which seemed to float in the air while the audience collectively held its breath. These few minutes alone were worth the price of admission.
Schumann had already cropped up, during the first half of the programme, in the form of his seldom-heard Four Klavierstücke, Op.32.
Seldom-heard they may be, yet the authorship was clear from the outset, particularly in the somewhat lumpy theme of the opening Scherzo. Lisiecki played the four with a wonderful spontaneity, whether the suitably playful scherzo, the engagingly bouncy gigue (Bach was stated to be the influence, although I'm not sure that anything but the movement titles brought him to my mind), the volatile romance or the almost throwaway final fughetta, played with great delicacy.
Of course a pianist of Polish extraction is going to give us — and be largely judged by — his Chopin. Lisiecki closed the first part of his programme with the Scherzo No.1, Op.20 and opened the second with the two Op.48 Nocturnes.
The scherzo's dramatic opening arrested the attention and the rest of the performance held it in a vice-like grip. Lisiecki's torrential passagework in the outer sections was all but overwhelming. In the central section I felt a sense of consolation rather than the private grief he outlined in his spoken introduction; no matter, it was cast in lovely tone colours. The torrential recapitulation closed the piece with a dramatic flourish.
Chopin may not have invented the nocturne (that was almost certainly the Irish composer John Field) yet, as with several other essentially small-scale forms, he made it his own.
Lisiecki's limpid pianism, giving way to a huge tone in the climaxes of the first of the pair, was simply perfect for the music. I could happily have listened to him perform all nineteen nocturnes; and then encore the lot.
It may be that I have been listening to too many harpsichordists (or too much Glenn Gould) but I found the afternoon's opener, Bach's Partita No.3, BWV827, rather too pianistic and romantic for my taste.
While there were undoubtedly many things to admire in the performance, times change and — somewhat to my own surprise — whereas I would probably have enjoyed this greatly half a century ago, today it seems an anachronistic way of playing Bach.
Having said which, it is worth pointing out that most of the audience seemed to enjoy it greatly.
Jan Lisiecki is clearly another in a line of outstanding Canadian pianists; he combines a maturity beyond his years with the freshness and spontaneity of youth. It was a distinct coup for Eine Kleine to have him open their thirtieth-anniversary season.
Finally, I should like to dedicate this review to the memory of Betty Parker-Jervis, for some two decades the President of Eine Kleine Summer Music, who passed away earlier this year. She will be missed.
MiV Home