Nov 18th 2016

Angelich revives a Beethoven warhorse

by Michael Johnson

Michael Johnson is a music critic with particular interest in piano. 

Johnson worked as a reporter and editor in New York, Moscow, Paris and London over his journalism career. He covered European technology for Business Week for five years, and served nine years as chief editor of International Management magazine and was chief editor of the French technology weekly 01 Informatique. He also spent four years as Moscow correspondent of The Associated Press. He is the author of five books.

Michael Johnson is based in Bordeaux. Besides English and French he is also fluent in Russian.

You can order Michael Johnson's most recent book, a bilingual book, French and English, with drawings by Johnson:

“Portraitures and caricatures:  Conductors, Pianist, Composers”

 here.

The Franco-American pianist Nicholas Angelich delivered a freshly crafted version of a Beethoven warhorse, Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat, Op. 73, together with the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine conducted by Paul Daniel, in the Auditorium of Bordeaux Thursday evening (Nov.17). There was nothing tired and hackneyed about this accomplished performance. It brought the familiar Beethoven strains magically back to life.

Angelich is a trouper of the global concert circuit and his stopover in Bordeaux was an event of some import. His Beethoven was a highlight of the annual “L’Esprit du Piano” festival, ten days of concerts and recitals, with many of the participants of international repute.

Nicholas Angelich, a drawing by Michael Johnson

The audience responded to Angelich’s playing so emotionally that spontaneous applause broke out at the end of the first movement. Caught by surprise, he waited patiently for the clamor to die down.

Angelich went on to the solo passage, a delicate start that he built with his perfectly negotiated arpeggios and trills. Angelich made the concerto his own, notably in dialogue passages that required precise coordination with Daniel’s very polished players. They all seemed at home with each other.

The crowd brought Angelich back for two encores – two of the more tender Chopin mazurkas – with rhythmic clapping and cries of encouragement.

Still under the Beethoven rubrique, the program had opened with a hommage to the great composer but in contemporary dress. “Testament”, Dean Brett’s 2008 collection of short, choppy motifs, seemed beyond this audience. Program notes described the piece as “very true to the Beethoven spirit” but few in the Auditorium were likely to have made that connection. Contemporary music can best be appreciated if one knows in advance how long a piece will last. The program notes helpfully warned this one would go on for 15 minutes.

The program offered another innovation – Beethoven’s incidental music for Egmont, Op. 84, first staged in 1810. This mix of narration, soprano lieder and Beethoven’s full-throated orchestration, was updated to include modern references to oppression, notably Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King. The original text played against the backdrop of Goethe’s drama of the same name glorifying a Dutch hero who resisted Napoleonic domination. In this version, narration was provided by Argentinian actor Marcial di Fonzo Bo, and the soprano passages by the very appealing, diminutive French singer Chloé Briot.

The piano festival got off to a bumpy start when another major pianist, Boris Berezovsky, abruptly withdrew on the eve of his date, claiming an unspecified illness. His replacement, the Russian lawyer-pianist Andrei Korobeinikov, stepped in. The heart of Berezovsky’s planned repertoire was picked up by Korobeinikov, the monumental Hammerklavier, but his interpretation left some puzzled. His very personal choices of tempi were erratic although his technical prowess remained impressive. And yet he seemed overmatched in his efforts to convey the depths of this work.

His adagio sostenuto, one of the most captivating passes in the romantic repertoire, was played so slowly it lost all integrity.  The late British musicologist Donald Tovey has noted that slowing down this movement is always a temptation for pianists. “This must be resisted,” Tovey wrote, for slower tempi will mean that “the movement becomes unintelligible”. Some in the audience would nod their agreement. By the end, Korobeinikov had stretched the sonata to almost 60 minutes, about 15 minutes beyond the average playing time.

 


This article is brought to you by the author who owns the copyright to the text.

Should you want to support the author’s creative work you can use the PayPal “Donate” button below.

Your donation is a transaction between you and the author. The proceeds go directly to the author’s PayPal account in full less PayPal’s commission.

Facts & Arts neither receives information about you, nor of your donation, nor does Facts & Arts receive a commission.

Facts & Arts does not pay the author, nor takes paid by the author, for the posting of the author's material on Facts & Arts. Facts & Arts finances its operations by selling advertising space.

 

 

Browse articles by author

More Music Reviews

Mar 15th 2018

The Brahms Scherzo Op. 4 opens with a delicate and playful theme, then carries us along on waves of emotion swinging from the filigree, to the lyrical, the thunderous, and back to the delicate.

Mar 9th 2018

Perhaps enough time has passed since the death of the famous French pedagogue Nadia Boulanger to step back and question her musical sainthood. After all, she was only human. 

Feb 21st 2018

A new “electronic opera” from Ireland, “Heresy”, broke new ground in contemporary opera a couple of years ago, bringing together Irish vocal talent and the synthesized music of much-decorated composer Roger Doyle.

Feb 4th 2018

Elegant, poised and deeply musical Ran Jia has brought a new freshness to the Franz Schubert piano sonatas, a phenomenal achievement considering how often they have been performed by the greatest pianists of the past 75 years.

Jan 31st 2018

American expat pianist David Lively found happiness in Paris as a teen-aged piano prodigy and got so busy performing and studying  -- with an Alfred  Cortot associate -- that he ended up making his life in France, a “different planet” culturally, he says, compared to that of his native land. 

Jan 26th 2018

When young French pianist François Dumont appeared at the Salle Gaveau in Paris recently, the critics embraced him without reserve. One wrote that his recital “confirmed his place in the family of the best musicians in France”.

Jan 13th 2018

Nearly two hours of Debussy’s solo piano music at one sitting can be, for some, too much impressionistic color to digest. And indeed a woman beside me fell asleep during the twelve Préludes, Book One.

Nov 29th 2017

In the world of classical music trios, there are few combinations as natural as the cello, guitar and piano. Operating mostly in the same register, attacking and retreating equally, the instruments can blend beautifully if played with discipline and heart. 

Nov 3rd 2017

A California polymath has electrified the music world with his images of classical music in visual form, capturing more than 165 million hits on his Internet postings in just a few years.  Only pop singers or weird videos do better. 

Oct 30th 2017

Ukrainian-born Evgeny Ukhanov, based in Australia for the past 20 years, is an established performer of new music originating in his adopted homeland. Now he has teamed up with friend and Melbourne composer Alan Griffiths on a new CD of selections regrouped under the title “Introspection”. 

Sep 9th 2017
 

If music makes you happy or sad, you are probably an average listener. If it leaves you indifferent, you might be considered insensitive. But if it gives you goosebumps you are in a very special group with connections in your brain anatomy that others may never feel.

Aug 31st 2017

Lake Como, known as the “magic lake” of Italy, has inspired writers and composers for centuries with natural surroundings so conducive to creative expression.

Aug 16th 2017
File 20170815 15219 g8geue

Much of the mythology that surrounds Elvis Presley, who died 40 yea

Aug 2nd 2017

Katia and Marielle Labèque -- the glamorous French keyboard siblings -- have achieved a solid legacy of exuberant performances in the two-piano repertoire, ranging from experimental contemporary works to traditional classical-romantic composers.

Jun 24th 2017

I was flipping through my copy of Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 6 recently and spotted his two “col pugno” markings. My memory took me back many years to the day I first encountered these violent directions. At the time, I didn’t know what to think.

Jun 21st 2017

One of the world’s greatest living violinists, Maxim Vengerov, accompanied by an equally accomplished pianist Roustem Saïtkoulov, dazzled a full house at the 18th century Grand Théâtre of Bordeaux Sunday night (18 June) with a faultless concert.

Jun 17th 2017

A classical-trained German pianist working in a range of musical disciplines has just launched his most audacious experiment yet – an original piano sonata consisting almost entirely of creations from his unconscious mind.

Jun 5th 2017

The Orchestre National de Bordeaux Aquitaine added another feather to its cap last week (June 1-2) with the engagement of a leading international guest conductor, Michail Jurowski, who led the ONBA in two demanding orchestral pieces, the Shostakovich Symphony No.

May 24th 2017

Taking a break in gaps between a Mozart piano concerto in Izmir, Turkey, (No. 9, “Jeunehomme”), a recording session of three Mozart concertos in Rennes, France (Nos.