I made my selection of concerts way back in December 2023, when the programs were announced and now, eight months later, I wonder at some choices. Why so many piano recitals and no chamber music? I guess there are a couple of reasons. One is simply the dates I was able to come. Due to needing to coordinate with my German friends I couldn't come at the very beginning nor the very end. Also, back home we get nothing but chamber music plus some poor pianists, so it seemed like a lovely idea to hear some fine pianists. In any case, I opted for six piano concerts. The pianist last night was Pierre-Laurent Aimard, whom I really didn't know before except that he is a specialist in contemporary music. I have to say that I loved the program--if I were a pianist with no technical limitations this is the kind of program I would like to play:
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG
Three Piano Pieces op. 11
ALEXANDER SKRYABIN
Sonata No. 9 in F major op. 68, ‘Black Mass’
MAURICE RAVEL
Gaspard de la nuit — Three poems for piano after Aloysius Bertrand
ANTON WEBERN
Variations for piano op. 27
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG
Six Little Piano Pieces op. 19
JOHANNES BRAHMS
Six Piano Pieces op. 118
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG
Piano piece op. 33a
ROBERT SCHUMANN
Gesänge der Frühe (Songs of the Morning) op. 133
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG
Five Piano Pieces op. 23
MAURICE RAVEL
Le Tombeau de Couperin
Loads of Schoenberg plus my two favorite Ravel showpieces? What's not to like? Well, it's a long program with two intervals...
At the concert, Aimard switched the order of the Schoenberg op. 19 and the Webern. Long night! The concert started promptly at 7 pm and wasn't over until nearly 10:30. And no encores! M. Aimard, on about his fourth curtain call said something like "I really don't think we need any encores tonight?" To which we all agreed. In a sense, we already got some encore material with the Brahms.
It was an excellent concert. M. Aimard is a powerful, muscular pianist as he showed in the Scriabin and Schoenberg pieces. But he also has a liquid facility which showed in the Ravel. Really fine program which the audience thoroughly enjoyed despite a lot of Schoenberg from the 1920s and 30s. At the beginning I had to adjust to the very different sonority Aimard makes compared to Sokolov from the night before. Where Sokolov is translucent pearl, Aimard is more rustic textile--if you can accept those metaphors. This was a giant program which he delivered with aplomb. Apart from the no encores, another difference with Sokolov is that Aimard played everything from the score. Tonight is Evgeny Kissin with Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms and Prokofiev.
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| Pierre-Laurent Aimard acknowledging applause |
2 comments:
Aimard's recordings of Messiaen's Vingt Regards is so good. He also did a strange recording of Ives's Concord Sonata that was almost viciously modernist. Definitely his thing, as you say.
A three and a half hour piano recital... Goodness. I would have struggled, I confess.
Yes, the Messiaen would be exactly his thing. I have to listen to that Ives! It was a long recital but two things made it work, for me at least: the great variety of the program--so many different kinds of pieces. And I found that if you asked for a cushion, they would give you one. The Großer Saal has wooden seats.
After the six encores, a Sokolov recital gets pretty close to three hours.
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