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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
July 2, 2017
As a resident of Nanaimo and hence somewhat out of touch with la vie musicale in Victoria, I might be forgiven for learning about the above concert only through hearsay. The hearsay in question (delivered by none other than Deryk Barker) stated that entry would be by voluntary contribution at the door, so I assumed that I would be facing talented students from the Victoria Conservatory of Music practising the nerve-wracking art of performing before a live audience. I was therefore mightily surprised to discover on arrival that each of the two pianists was in fact a world-class soloist, chamber musician and teacher.
Michelle Mares and Mark Anderson embarked on Béla Bartók's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, the pianos being set at a relative angle of some thirty degrees as explicitly required by Bartók himself. In the background, Aaron Mattock and Rob Pearce followed suit on a variety of percussion instruments. I had never heard piano accompanied by percussion, perhaps because I usually shun music by Bartók. My old prejudices were shattered by the discovery that percussion can enhance both the flashpoints and the more sombre moods of piano music through a wide range of dynamics, tempo and sound quality. Because the percussion instruments were obscured by the pianos, I was unable to visually identify their types, but their sound suggested a collection of snare drum, bass drum, timpani, various cymbals, and marimba.
I have sometimes wondered whether any atonal piano piece by Bartók can be learned by heart. In Western tonal music the pianist is guided by a set of harmonic conventions which provide context in case he/she suffers a sudden memory lapse. Bartók's compositions usually ignore such anchors in key and chromaticity, making the performer entirely reliant on the sheet music. Or could it be that a (minor) mistake will simply go unnoticed by the audience?
During the intermission, the percussion instruments were removed and the two pianos re-arranged in the traditional dovetail fashion. Anderson's grand piano also required some re-tuning after its atonal workout.
Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances Op.45 were composed only three years before Bartók's Sonata, yet the two compositions could hardly have been more different. This oeuvre was also the last before his sudden death in March 1943. Almost every measure in the Dances contains harmonic and rhythmic transitions that are incredibly audacious, always challenging the limits of the "tonal allowables". For listeners less familiar with his art, the textural richness might seem overwhelming. For others, it is vintage Rachmaninoff, albeit with a certain autumnal gloom not found in his earlier piano solo pieces, concertos and symphonies.
The Symphonic Dances were originally arranged as an orchestral suite but, in parallel, Rachmaninoff wrote the version for two pianos which he first performed together with Vladimir Horowitz at a private soirée in Beverly Hills.
One thing Bartók and Rachmaninoff had in common was their exile status in America after fleeing their respective homelands because of the rise of political regimes which they could not abide. Neither of the two composers felt comfortable in the New World, and yet their discomfort seems to have stimulated rather than stifled their creativity, as if the longing for a return to their roots acted as an artistic catalyst.
Which begs an interesting question: Would their music have sounded differently if they had stayed put in their countries of origin? Alas, we shall never know the answer.
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