Germans and Italians at the Keyboard

The Dallapiccola formed the centrepiece of the first half of Anyssa Neumann's wonderfully eclectic recital for Oak Bay Music on Saturday, in a performance which must surely have inspired at least some of those present to investigate the composer further.

Dallapiccola's considerable achievement, it seems to me, is that, while utilising the full armory of the serialist, he produced a work which is, by turns, charming, affectionate, playful and energetic.

Neumann clearly holds the music in high regard and gave as persuasive a performance as one could wish for, from the slowly treading, tolling bells of the opening Simbolo (Symbol) to the delicate close of the final Quartina (Quatrain). Her playing said to the listener not an apologetic "if you really listen hard you will surely find something here to enjoy", but rather an enthusiatic "forget the methodology, this is wonderful music — enjoy!"

Even what was, on the face of it, the most "difficult" piece, Andantino amorose e Contrapunctus tertius, which is in the form of a "crab" canon (or canon cancrizans, defined by Merriam-Webster as "a musical canon in which the comes is a retrograde version of the dux"; well, obviously), in Neumann's hands, came across as more affectionate than anything else. (Incidentally, and pace M-W, a simpler definition is that the crab canon is one in which one canonical line is played backwards; in the Quaerendo invenietis of Bach's Musical Offering the second line is also inverted, which is achieved by one player turning the music upside-down.)

For this delightful glimpse into a composer who is, for most of us, little more than a footnote in the history of the music of the Twentieth Century, I was certainly more than grateful.

The Dallapiccola was preceded and followed by two of Bach's lesser-known keyboard works.

For the opening Six Little Preludes, Neumann adopted a tone rather warmer than the almost dessicated one which many pianists seem today to feel obliged to use, yet it was far from inappropriate.

Highlights included BWV930, which was slow and exquisitely beautiful but also immensely profound in the way that only Bach can be. The final BWV925 (she did not play them in order) was delicious and heart-warming.

Neumann closed the first half with Bach's Aria Variata all maniera italiana, the aria itself sharing the feel of the theme of the Goldbergs. I'm not sure that I could ascertain the difference between the "Italian" and any other Eighteenth Century manner, although the right hand of the second variation did, for some unaccountable reason, put me in mind of Rossini.

Once again I can only express my gratitude that Neumann not only gave us some less often heard Bach, but that she played it with such conviction and so beautifully.

Leoš Janáček's On an Overgrown Path began life as just three pieces in 1901, intended for the harmonium. Seven years later, there were nine pieces, now designated as being for the piano. In 1911 the definitive version of what is now Book I, consisting of ten pieces, was pubished, followed almost immediately (September 30, 1911) by the first of what would become Book II, a further five short pieces. Various of the pieces have been arranged for string quartet, for orchestra, for accordion, for guitar quartet, for oboe quartet, for wind ensemble and for string orchestra.

Clearly, these short pieces are of considerable interest, which makes it all the stranger that they are not more often heard; to my knowledge, aside from on record, I have never heard more than one or two of these pieces in the flesh, given as encores.

The pieces of Book I, which Neumann gave us, are without exception exquisite miniatures: Our Evenings, for instance, seemed redolent of the domestic bliss of an older couple in their twilight years; A Blown-Away Leaf was a study in evanescence; Come With Us! appropriately inviting.

I was most taken with the solemnity and cimbalom-like textures of The Madonna of Frydek and the enigmatic Words Fail!. Unutterable Anguish certainly lived up to its title, conveying an increasing sense of desperation, with its repeated two-note figure like a knife striking at the heart; how apt that the succeeding In Tears was lachrymose yet somehow consoling.

The title of last piece — The Barn Owl Has Not Flown Away — put me in mind, somewhat irreverently, of one of those coded recognition signals exchanged in espionage novels and spoken in a heavily cod-Slavic accent: "The geese are on the wing tonight", "Yes, but the barn owl has not flown away".

Neumann characterised each piece superbly and left at least one listener keen to hear Book II.

Quejas, ó la maja y el ruiseñor (Laments, or the Maiden and the Nightingale) is the best-known of Enrique Granados's suite Goyescas, generally considered his masterpiece. I understand that the main melody was borrowed by Mexican songwriter Consuelo Velázquez for her 1940 song "Bésame Mucho", but I found myself wondering whether Astor Piazzolla might not also have been acquainted with it.

In Neumann's hands it was most certainly plaintive and she shrugged lightly aside the manifold technical difficulties of the music in a rivetting performance coloured with a delectable tonal palette.

Finally, Neumann gave us Liszt's spectacular arrangement of Isolde's Liebestod from his son-in-law, Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.

Liszt, of course, not only provided Wagner with his second wife, Cosima, he may also have supplied the famous "Tristan" chord (there is a letter extant in which Wagner admits to having borrowed the chord but then proceeds to say that "there is no need to let everybody know" — nice man), although it has been suggested that the chord is actually present in works by Chopin (the Mazurka Op.68 No.4), Berlioz (Romeo et Juliette) and even earlier composers.

Although the nineteenth century is replete with keyboard arrangements of orchestral music, intended largely for domestic consumption, when Liszt made this transcription he was quite probably the only living pianist capable of performing it.

Today piano technique has advanced considerably, in no small part due to Liszt's own technical innovations, and Neumann quickly showed that she too has technique to spare, in a wondefrully involving performance, beautfully contoured and with a commanding control of the gradually rising tension.

When the music died away the silence in the church was all but tangible, before the tide of applause swept it away.

Of course there had to be an encore and it was, as Neumann said, "back to the Germans and Italians" with one of Ferrucio Busoni's piano version of a Bach organ chorale prelude, "Nunn komm, der Heiden Heiland". (For many who had the privilege to hear them both, Busoni was second only to Liszt as history's greatest pianist.)

This lovely piece proved a most suitable foil to the overheated Wagner and a perfect end to a most enjoyable evening.

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