Irish Timeswriters review a selection of recent events
Boris Berezovsky
NCH, Dublin
Rachmaninov– Sonata No 1. Chopin– Scherzo No 1. Etudes Op 10 Nos 1, 6, 12. Godowsky– Studies on Chopin's Etudes Op 10 Nos 1, 6, 12. Liszt– Paysage. Mazeppa. Eroica. Wilde Jagd. Chasse-neige.
It takes something special to make a programme like this work. Boris Berezovsky has it in spades. Even though piano music does not come much more difficult than some of this, the challenge has far less to do with mere technique than with musicianship – with enabling each piece to tell its own story in its own terms.
There were some changes to the advertised programme, with Rachmaninov’s Sonata No 1 beginning the recital rather than ending it. Within a couple of minutes, comments about technique seemed superfluous, except that what Berezovsky did was so breathtakingly beautiful – in tone, in perfect placing and pacing within this sonata’s deliberately loose narrative, and in the deceptive ease with which torrents of notes created utterly persuasive large-scale design.
The second half included some of the most infamous piano music of all time. As a taster to three of Godovsky's rarely played Studies on Chopin's Etudes, we heard the latter's Scherzo No 1, played with astonishing and very Russian-sounding flair. Then, each of the Godowsky studies was prefaced by the Chopin work on which it is based.
Can you imagine the famous “Revolutionary” Etude played by left hand alone? Hard to believe. But there it was. And, as with everything in this concert, it was beautifully shaped.
That ability to transcend the physical challenges of such preposterously difficult music was part of Berozovsky's secret. And he sustained it throughout five of Liszt's Transcendental Studies. He moved very little; and his calm physicality seemed focused far more on listening, on holding onto a train of thought.
Virtuosity was more a tool rather than an end. And at the end, after a few impeccably shaped miniatures as encores, one was left thinking that Berezovsky is one of the greatest pianists of our time. MARTIN ADAMS
Upshaw, Knights Chamber Orchestra/ Jacobson
National Gallery, Dublin
Concert programmes, no more than individual works of music or meals, don’t often begin with the main attraction. There are usually some kind of hors d’oeuvres before the pièce de résistance.
This concert in the Music for Museums series at the National Gallery threw away the rule-book. All of the best stuff was in the first half, leaving the post-interval music-making to function as an anti-climax.
The concert marked the Irish début of American soprano Dawn Upshaw, a singer who marries individual beauty of tone with an unswerving commitment to contemporary music and an interpretative approach of real gumption.
The evening opened with two songs by the Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov, a musical polyglot who draws on diverse ethnic sources to create scores that are unerring in their sensual aim, at times to the point of bordering on kitsch. Upshaw sang Night of the Flying Horsesand Lúa descoloridawith a strangely stirring mixture of effects. She was at once earthy, tender, full-toned, fragile, projecting universes of feeling into individual notes. The partnership of the Knights under Eric Jacobsen was of a richness to match.
Four songs from musicals followed – Rodgers's He Was Too Good to Me, Sondheim's There Won't be Trumpetsand What More Do I Need, and Bernstein's Somewhere– all done with natural ease. And the Knights closed off the first half with an account of Philip Glass's Company(music originally written for a staging of Beckett's novel Company) that was remarkable for its subtle textures and gorgeous hues.
Everything after the evening was altogether more ordinary – a not quite workmanlike arrangement of a Bach chorale ( O Haupt voll Blut und Wundenby Knights pianist, Steven Beck), an unexceptionable but unexceptional account of the suite from Aaron Copland's ballet, Appalachian Springin the original scoring for 13 instruments, and a rather too generous set by singer-songwriter, and Knights member, Christina Courtin, plugging an album that's due out next month.
In the end, the strange ordering of the programme may not have paid off. But the evening's opening had one of those special auras that will etch it long in the memory. MICHAEL DERVAN
