Jan Lisiecki
Sunday, February 26, 2012 2pm
Raitt Recital Hall, Pepperdine University
Malibu, CA
Program
J.S. Bach
Well-tempered Clavier (Book II ñ BWV 870-893)
Prelude and fugue No. 14 in F sharp minor, BWV 883
Beethoven
Piano Sonata No. 24 in F sharp major, Op. 78
Liszt
Three concert etudes S 144
Il Lamento
La Leggierezza
Un Sospiro
Mendelssohn
Variations Serieuses, Op. 54
(Intermission)
J.S Bach
Well-tempered Clavier (Book I ñ BWV 846-859)
Prelude and Fugue No. 12 in F minor, BWV 857
Chopin
12 Etudes, Op. 25
(encore)
Chopin
Valse, Op. 64 No. 2
My baffling quest to find interesting piano recitals in the LA area before they actually occur continues. For those of you not familiar with my plight, here's a quick summary. I like to attend piano recitals. I do everything I can to find out when they're happening. Despite my best efforts, LA Concert promoters endeavor to keep their concerts a secret. No matter how hard I try – putting myself on mailing lists, trolling internet websites with regularity, searching artist-specific webpages – I often find out about piano recitals by reading the reviews a few days after they've already happened.
I'm not the greatest fan of adaptive email marketing (a.k.a. spam), but I have to give credit where credit is due. Ticketmaster and StubHub have figured out that I like to go to classical concerts. Yes, their algorithms are still somewhat coarse - they're not bashful about bombarding me with crossover concerts I have zero interest in. Still, despite my best efforts there's no way I would have known that Jan Lisiecki was playing a recital within seven miles of my house without the miracle of spam.
It gets better. I immediately went to the Pepperdine website. The concert was listed, but it was marked as SOLD OUT. I clicked through to Ticketmaster anyway (clicks are free, after all), and they had no problem selling me a ticket on the very front row. Glad they have their story straight and glad I'm too stupid to take no for an answer! This may sound like a rather circuitous route to end up with concert tickets, but this is no more than par for my usual course. I've concluded that a SoCal classical music promoter is a person who gets paid to keep enthusiasts away. They are very, very good at their jobs.
The concert was at Raitt Recital Hall on Pepperdine's spectacularly beautiful campus in Malibu.
The hall holds almost exactly 100 people. I just missed Lisiecki's recital in Verbier last summer (it took place at 11:00 am on the afternoon I arrived), but I saw it via MediciTV's feed on the web. He played the identical program he was set to play at Pepperdine and he was simply amazing. Lisiecki is a 16-year-old Canadian. I don't know how much biography I need to provide because 16 years does not allow for a lot of life to document. If you want what little information there is, his website can be found here.
Lisiecki came out after a short introduction. Given the intimacy of the hall, he decided to provide spoken introductions before each section. He opened with a F# minor Prelude and Fugue from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier (WTC) Book II. His Bach made no apologies to the piano. Lisiecki made sparing use of the damper pedal but he achieved such a perfect finger legato its absence was barely noticeable unless you were looking at his feet. He utilized dynamics, but more in the manner of Edwin Fischer than, say, Richter or Sokolov.
His next piece was Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 24 (Op. 78), also in F# minor. Lisiecki mentioned in his introduction that Beethoven once referred to this odd-shaped two movement work as his favorite of his 32. I can see why, because you really have to have a deep love and understanding of Beethoven to pull this piece off. Kempff's mono recording provides an excellent example of how to do so. The first movement has a lyrical, yearning quality but seems to belong more to a set of Bagatelles than to the opening movement of the Sonata chosen to follow the mighty “Appassionata.” The second and final movement is a Rondo Allegro whose principal theme sounds like a beer-hall song. Despite its surface quirks, there's a lot going on beneath the veneer of this nine-minute work. By choosing this piece over the likes of the Appasionata, Waldstein, or even the Pastorale which seem to be the “go-to” Beethoven Sonatas for young pianists, he suggests a sense of taste and understanding that is quite rare for a musician under thirty. That he can pull this piece off convincingly is even more impressive. When I'm evaluating a new set of Beethoven Piano Sonatas, this is one of the first pieces I will turn to (along with Op. 7 and Op. 54) to hear if the pianist is truly has something to say about this music, or whether he's completing yet another Beethoven sonata cycle because his producer or agent thought it may be a good idea. At the ripe old age of 16, Lisiecki passes this test and then some. Once again, he used the damper pedal sparingly but his amazing legato would prevent you from knowing so if you weren't looking at his feet. This allowed him to maintain clean textures and perfectly control his chord balances without sounding dry in the least.
Next up were the Liszt Concert Etudes. Again, this was an interesting Liszt selection for a young pianist. There's some flash, but a lot more difficulty of the non-flashy and musical variety than is found is many more audience-friendly Liszt choices (e.g. Funerailles and some of the Transcendental Etudes). His “La Leggierezza” and especially “Un Sospiro” were studies in how to maintain a beautiful, flowing musical line against a procession of technical impossibilities, all without calling undue attention to anything but the music. In this way, he was much more in the tradition of Arrau and Bolet than he was of Horowitz and Cziffra. He achieved a full, rounded sound and a decent dynamic range, but again not in the hyper-dynamic Russian style. Never once did his tone turn harsh nor did he bang. Banging is often the result of a bad interpretive game plan. If a performer uses up the bulk of his controlled dynamic range before he's ready, banging is sometimes the only tool left in the box. I recently heard a pianist display her maximum forte in the first page of the Liszt Sonata. Where was she to go from there? (Answer: nowhere good). Lisiecki's blueprint in these Liszt pieces was well-conceived and executed to perfection. “Un Sospiro” was truly memorable. It was one of the best performances of the work I've heard, and easily the highlight of the recital.
The first half closed with Mendelssohn's “Variations Serieuses.” Once again, Lisiecki achieved miracles of clarity via the use of finger legato over the damper pedal, but this was the one point of the concert where I feel that his control may have gotten away from him. The concluding variations have plenty of percussive repeated chords and while the end result was exciting, there was also more than a little banging. I could see how Lisiecki wished to end the first half on a thrilling note, but given his spectacular success with the previous Liszt group I think he would have been better served by choosing another Liszt piece over the Mendelssohn.
The second half opened with another selection from Bach's “Great 48” - the F minor Prelude and Fugue from WTC I. It was well-played, but I'm not sure why Lisiecki felt the need to circle the program back to its beginning. Lisiecki's fingers were well-warmed at this point and he could have easily proceeded on to the Chopin Etudes without anyone feeling cheated, but impeccably-played Bach is always welcome.
As the opening Bach selection mirrored the key of the Beethoven Sonata, this F minor Bach Prelude and Fugue set up the first Etude of Chopin's Op. 25 set in the related major (A-flat). It is incredibly brave for a pianist of any age to attempt either set of Chopin Etudes (Op. 10 or Op. 25) in a recital setting. Each piece presents a different technical challenge. There have been many famous pianists – Horowitz, Rubinstein, and Richter to name three – who never performed the complete set as there was one or more etudes that they never felt they could master. First and foremost, despite all of the technical demands the performer needs to treat these pieces as music. Alfred Cortot was perhaps the greatest exponent of these pieces as pure music in spite of the fact that he could barely play two measures in a row mistake-free. There's an awful lot to balance here, and presenting each etude live in sequence one after the other is cumulatively taxing, both physically and mentally. It doesn't help matters that the most stamina-draining etudes are the final three.
I was impressed that Lisiecki approached each etude on it's own terms. I have heard pianists approach some of the slower etudes as resting points, or even as supports from which to leap forward. Not the case here. Lisiecki seemed to be “in the moment” in every single piece which is an ideal to strive for but incredibly hard to achieve. His execution was technically breathtaking and musically superb. The only quibble I could make is that I found #11 (the “Winter Wind”) a bit too rushed. It wasn't quite as maniacally fast as Andre Gavrilov's recording (the fastest I've ever heard), but it was not far behind it. This performance of Op. 25 could be compared without apology to to Grigory Sokolov's live recording. It's hard for me to imagine I'll ever hear these pieces performed better in recital.
Lisiecki played one encore: Chopin's Waltz Op. 64 No. 2. He played it with a touch of Mazurka rhythm, which was interesting. Many of Chopin's favorite genres are in ¾ – the Polonaises, the Mazurka's, and obviously the Waltz's. I believe that if Chopin had wanted this piece played as a Mazurka he would have designated it as such as he did with 50-odd other pieces in his canon. Still, it's always interesting to hear a different take on an oft-performed piece whether or not one agrees.
The audience – all 100 strong, mostly senior citizens – were rapturous. I heard several people mention that this was far and away the best recital this series has ever presented. Lisiecki greeted audience members in the lobby afterward and signed copies of what is so far his only CD: both Chopin Concertos recorded with Howard Shelley and the Sinfonia Varsovia when he was 14. I spoke briefly with him and asked him which were his favorite recordings of Op. 25. He mentioned Perahia and Pollini. I asked if he had heard Cortot and he said that he preferred modern “audiophile” recordings over historical recordings. Ah, youth.
So now I have yet another young pianist to keep on my “must see” radar. There are worse burdens to have. Besides, I have a feeling that even in Southern California keeping abreast of his local performances will not remain difficult for very long. I suspect that in a few years' time when I boast that I saw Jan Lisiecki play a full recital from the front row of a 100-seat hall many will not believe me.
