Renowned pianist, Kirill Gerstein, performed for Musica Viva’s 2024 series at the Melbourne Recital Centre last week. Gerstein, in his program notes, said that in addition to logical connections, a program should mirror a good meal – “you don’t want to serve three steaks” or “cake before … the main dish”. The program focused on Chopin, Liszt, Fauré, Poulenc and contemporary composers Brad Mehldau and Liza Lim; works by great German composers were noticeably not included.
Gerstein’s pianistic style is highly individualistic, marked by a rare command of contrapuntal interplay, luminously enticing tone colorations and an incisive rhythmic style that may be a reflection of his dual skill in jazz and classical repertoire.
The programme included two Fantasy pieces by Chopin: the Polonaise-Fantasie and Fantasy in F minor. The themes in each of these works are woven into dense cadenza passages and rapid figurations amidst a chromatic idiom foreshadowing the harmonic language of Wagner.
Gerstein maintained taut control of these disparate structures, unveiling each episode as a natural consequence of the other. In the central B major chorale-like sections of each piece he conjured a mesmerisingly poetic lyricism with rich sustain and finely voiced bass counterpoints. His elegant playing of the embellished double note passages in both works reminded one of Chopin’s writings about the Parisian premiere of Meyerbeer’s opera Robert le Diable in 1831 – Chopin declared that the sopranos who impressed him were not those who “amazed”, but those who “delighted”.
Interesting however, was Gerstein’s interpretation of the fanfare introduction to Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantasie. Here a three-note Polonaise rhythmic motive appears above two strongly played chords. The highest notes of both chords are identical, binding them harmonically. Gerstein interposed a significant silence between these chords; this abruptly cut the natural decay of overtones of the first thereby breaking the harmonic link to the second.
This raises three points: firstly, the absence of Chopin’s pedal marking between the two chords does not suggest a long articulatory break between them; secondly, the pianos of Chopin’s time sustained notes after their release far more than a modern Steinway – an imposed silence between the two chords would be extremely brief on Chopin’s piano; thirdly, the Polonaise figure above these chords is joined in the work’s later passages, suggesting it should be connected in the introduction. Nonetheless, Gerstein’s interpretation was certainly provocative.
The recital afforded a valuable chance to hear Liszt’s seldom performed Polonaise No. 2. Following a tight and majestic delivery of the theme, Gerstein savoured the melancholic Slavic character of the central A minor section, thundering fearlessly through the fortissimo double octave passages as they spanned the whole keyboard. Equally impressive were the trill and turn embellishments of the theme in the high treble, (mirroring the variations of La Campanella). Liszt’s contrary motion arpeggio writing in the work’s closing flourish is sonically weak, but Gerstein infused it with abundant power, bringing people to their feet. Liszt’s own playing held a similar effect on listeners, as Sacheverell Sitwell recounts in his biography of Liszt’s life where members of the audience trembled after a recital by Liszt in Paris in 1835.
“Moments of trembling or shaking” were a musical feature of celebrated Australian composer Liza Lim’s Transcendental Etude, premiered at the recital.
Lim said the work’s title refers to its “poetics” and there are no quotations from Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes but a brief quotation from Shervin Hajipour’s ballad Baraye, which symbolised the 2022 women’s movement in Iran.
Lim’s work explores various repeated note/chord motives swelling with increasing rhythmic complexity from veiled single notes to tumultuous outbursts in clusters covering the extreme registers of the keyboard.
The repeated single notes in the opening were redolent of the contemplative Bebung effect in Beethoven’s Sonata Op.110, and the dramatically charged repeated chord patterns recalled Chiaroscuro One by an earlier Australian composer, Margaret Sutherland. Her life was also blunted by suppression of women – a notable London Music Publishing House refused to publish Sutherland’s music because she was a woman!
Many composers have developed repeated note motives, but as the great musicologist Theodore Adorno wrote in his article “On the problem of music analysis” about Beethoven’s development, it is not the themes themselves that are so important but what they “become”. Lim has her own distinctive voice as Transcendental Etude demonstrates; it is a work of symphonic proportions with colourations that often explore the harmonics of the piano, creating a significant new opus for this instrument.
Earlier in the program Gerstein spoke passionately about Brad Mehldau’s Après Fauré Nocturne No. 3. Gerstein revelled in the work’s luxuriant jazz harmonies and motivic references to Fauré’s Nocturne No. 3. Gerstein also characterised the syncopated jazz rhythms of Poulenc’s Three Intermezzi with panache, drawing out the sonorous treble and bass dialogues in the second and third with a spell-binding finesse. The program concluded with an evocatively playful and rumbustious rendition of Schumann’s five-movement Carnival of Vienna, treading a fine line between passion and “insanity” in the performance of the turbulent pensiveness in the E-flat minor fourth movement.
Gerstein gave us two encores: Rachmaninov’s transcription of Kreisler’s Liebesleid and Chopin’s Waltz Op.42. His impishly mischievous interpretation of the Chopin seemed in the vein of Shura Cherkassky, the legendary interpreter of romantic piano music.
Photo supplied.
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Anthony Halliday reviewed the piano recital given by Kirill Gerstein as part of Music Viva Australia’s 2024 Chamber Music series at the Melbourne Recital Centre, Elisabeth Murdoch Hall on June 11, 2024.
