Travels have taken me away from New York, and away from the New York music scene—therefore, no New York Chronicle. But compact discs travel, and I have taken a few with me—showcasing a pianist, a violinist, and a cellist. And the cellist has composer friends.
The pianist is Maurizio Pollini, a senior statesman of music (born Milan, 1942). His friend is Beethoven. For the Deutsche Grammophon label, he has recorded three of Beethoven’s sonatas, and they are the first three: Op. 2, No. 1 (F minor); Op. 2, No. 2 (A major); and Op. 2, No. 3 (C major). These are not beginning sonatas, except in the sense that they lead off Beethoven’s remarkable span of thirty-two. They are excellent creations, three of the best sonatas Beethoven ever wrote, in my opinion. A handful of composers in history have not needed much seasoning: One thinks of Mozart and (less immortally) Mendelssohn, in addition to Beethoven. I venture to say that the Op. 2 sonatas are as great as Beethoven’s revered late sonatas, in their own way.
The rap against Pollini—for those who have not been fans—has been that he is cold, hard, severe. I have often been among the rappers myself. You’ll remember one of the most famous lines of music criticism ever penned: “There was skating on the Nile tonight.” (The target was Emma Eames, singing Aida.) On one occasion, Pollini’s playing of Chopin’s Barcarolle was so cold, I wondered how the boat could get moving, stuck in that ice. But Pollini can also be brilliant, commanding, and entirely convincing. It depends on what he’s playing, when you catch him—how he has gotten out of bed.
Ideally, how would we like the Op. 2 sonatas played? I say, cleanly and Classically, but also boldly, without fear or daintiness. The sonatas should be somewhat Mozartean, but also robust and daring. (Of course, Mozart often needs to be robust and daring too.) And how does our unpredictable Milanese fare?
In the first movement of Op. 2, No. 1, he is aggressive, but not harmfully so. He is crisp and confident, taking full advantage of the extraordinary music Beethoven has written. You might ask for different weights here and there—different stresses on the keyboard. These notes should be more staccato; those should be less so. But Pollini has his reasons for what he’s doing.
I might as well tell you now about something odd about this disc—something evident right from this first movement of the first sonata. Pollini makes a lot of noise. I mean, he grunts, exclaims, sings—breathes loudly through his nose. Some might find this appealingly human; I find it distracting and wrong. Pollini may even be out-sounding Gould.
The second movement of the F-minor sonata is an Adagio, and you have heard it more songful than from Pollini—but he is tolerable. At least his playing is mature and logical. (Pollini’s often logical.) The ensuing movement—Menuetto: Allegretto—is also mature and logical. Evenness of line becomes important here, and Pollini provides that admirably.
The last movement of this sonata—Prestissimo—prefigures one of Beethoven’s later sonatas, also in F minor: Op. 57, known as the “Appassionata.” But the movement is superb in itself, not a mere forerunner. Pollini plays it compellingly, sometimes grippingly. He demonstrates controlled fury, or fury just beneath the surface. And we are reminded: Gosh, young Beethoven was good—right out of the blocks.
His Sonata in A, Op. 2, No. 2, is one of the most delightsome pieces he ever wrote. It is full of play and fun—and we don’t necessarily think of these qualities when we think of Maurizio Pollini. But he does well enough (mainly). In the opening movement, he is generally clinical and precise. With him, we often think of a doctor, using surgical instruments. But sometimes, in this movement, a harshness creeps out. For example, there are sforzandi that should not quite be there. And Pollini at times sounds less than surgeon-like. His playing can be clumsy and thick, when it should be nimble and skipping.
The second movement—Largo appassionato—is one of the great slow movements in all the Beethoven sonatas. It gives us a song, even a hymn, over a steady pulse. And, in this performance, Pollini is far too mechanical. The music is punched and grim. Pollini’s fist—indeed, his whole being—should be more relaxed, letting in a spirituality. On this track, Pollini reminds me of a basically cold person trying to be warm. Or a mean person trying, without real success, to be nice.
But the third movement—the Scherzo—is sparkling, clear, even bird-like. And the middle portion surges darkly, as it should. As for Beethoven’s closing rondo, it is one of the more unusual he ever wrote—we can see this in the marking he gives it, “grazioso.” And there are touches in it of another, great future sonata: Op. 53, the “Waldstein.” Pollini carries off the A-major rondo with taste (if also with some unwanted heaviness).
And now to the final Op. 2 sonata: No. 3 in C major. An undoubted masterpiece, it has been beloved of pianists—pianists of all stripes—for many generations. For example, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli played this sonata, a lot. And Pollini studied with this brilliant, exacting, and fairly eccentric Italian.
I have something funny to say about Pollini’s playing of the first movement: There is nothing wrong with it, except that it doesn’t give the pleasure it should. Here, Beethoven is sometimes playing with the music—not so much composing it as playing with it. He is an incredibly inventive, exuberant guy reveling in his own talent—in what God has enabled him to do with notes. You don’t hear much of that from Pollini.
And so it goes, on to the end. The Scherzo comes in for the ice treatment, not much of a scherzo—too forbidding for that (but interesting and worthy nonetheless). Parts of the final movement are first-class. These do not include the sustained trills, which ought to be thrilling. Instead, they’re like a visit to the dentist.
The steeliness and even severity of this pianist have stood him in good stead over the years. They counter a certain amount of goo in the world. But those qualities can be overdone, as most qualities can. Some tempering would do Pollini wonders. But he is a formidable pianist, and we’ll miss him when he’s gone. He will never entirely be gone, however, because we have these recordings. And the latest—purveying Beethoven’s Op. 2 sonatas—is thoroughly Pollini-esque.
Our violinist is Janine Jansen, the sensation from Holland, born in 1978. “Sensation” is not quite the word for her, actually—it implies a flashiness, and Jansen is a deeply satisfying musician. She has all the tools: technique, insight, range—musicality. Her latest album (for Decca) brings us Bach. But not only straight Bach, which is to say original or pure Bach. Jansen plays arrangements of the Two-part Inventions and the Three-part Inventions. (The latter pieces are also called sinfonias.) And for this, she needs partners.
For the two-parters, her partner is Maxim Rysanov, a Ukrainian-born violist. The arrangement is simple: Each player takes a line—one of Bach’s two parts. It’s very strange to hear these familiar keyboard pieces played by two string instruments. Bach is flexible this way, however (if not infinitely so). And it is a joy to hear the inventions again. Considered student pieces, they’re almost never played in recital. So, to hear them—in whatever form—is to say hello to old friends. And what genius little pieces they are. As in The Well-Tempered Clavier, Bach seems to be inventing music—establishing modern music—as he composes.
Jansen and Rysanov play sensibly, with the right amount of respect and the right amount of inspiration, or freedom. In their hands, the inventions don’t sound much like keyboard pieces. Maybe that’s obvious. The inventions are stringly: with little swellings and the like, which seem alien. But the ear adjusts—and is delighted.
From these players, the Invention in E flat has sheer happy assertiveness—almost some sass, or impertinence. And the F-major invention has all its pep. To some tracks, we may object. For me, the E-major invention is played much too fast. It needs a walking tempo, and Jansen and Rysanov virtually run. Also, why is the A-minor invention so slow, indeed, lugubrious? The piece may be in a minor key, but—to my mind, at least—it’s almost as merry as “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.”
For the Three-part Inventions, the violinist and the violist are joined by a cellist: Torleif Tedéen, from Sweden. And now we are really in the realm of chamber music—trios, in fact. Bach’s keyboard pieces feel slightly recomposed. This is not a bad thing, but, to some, the inventions may sound too rich, too full—too transformed. In any event, our three strings play well, even if they make too much of certain moments. I think particularly of endings, which tend to be a little bit “just so”—posed.
The F-minor invention comes to us as a bleak, bleak chamber work—and highly effective. The Invention in G is shot through with joy, having a happy little current. The A-major invention is a modest but confident little march—striking. And objections? It’s hard to know when Jansen and her partners will go all out, and why they choose to do so, or not. The Three-part Invention in F is subdued, rather than its chipper self. And the B-minor invention is amazingly—dreadfully—slow: dirge-like, funereal. What they were thinking, I can’t fathom. But Bach interpretation is a battleground. And Jan- sen et al. have made a superb recording.
I had a funny thought while listening to these inventions—the three-parters, in particular. If you were introduced to these pieces by this recording—i.e., if you first heard the Three-part Inventions played by this string trio—would the keyboard originals then seem too plain to you? Could well be. If you’re used to whole milk, skim would seem thin gruel (and so, even, would 1 percent or 2). (Bach, I hasten to say, never wrote any gruel.)
On Jansen’s disc, there is some original, untranscribed Bach, and it is the Partita No. 2 in D minor. This is the partita from which comes the famous Chaconne—a much-transcribed piece itself. Do you know Brahms’s arrangement for piano left hand? Magnificent. But Bach’s partita, as a whole, must not be forgotten: It is an eternal masterpiece, which the Chaconne only crowns.
In the liner notes to her disc, Jansen is quoted as saying two things that especially warm the heart. First, she has little use for strict originalism, the “authenticity” that would rule out color, breadth, and other musical necessities. (I am being blunter than she would let herself be.) Baroque music must not be “boxed in,” she cautions. Second, she says something of particular interest to me. In my writing about musical performance, I am constantly warning against too much awe in works that are considered holy, or are, in fact, holy. An excess of awe can paralyze you and prevent you from conveying the music properly. This applies to many Mahler songs, and to some slow movements of Mahler symphonies; to Beethoven’s late quartets, and his late piano sonatas; to Schubert’s Winterreise; and to many other pieces—including Bach’s D-minor partita for violin. Here’s Jansen: “I must have been playing the partita for fifteen years, but when the time came to record it I was so overwhelmed by feelings of awe and respect that for a while I simply couldn’t put bow to string. Once I got over it, I had a great time …”
It’s a good thing she got over it. Jansen is magnificent. She exhibits sensitivity, flair, refinement, guts, balance, beauty (of various sorts)—all the things that go into musical judgment. And that crowning Chaconne? Jansen does not give too much too soon. She knows this is a long piece, a kind of journey, and she lets it build. And that word “lets” is important. She knows it is Bach who does the building. She does not make herself the center of the piece (the centerpiece!). When it ends, she simply ends it—there is nothing more to say.
And finally, to our cellist: Matt Haimovitz. Israeli-born, he has long been resident in the U.S., and he is now in his late thirties. Haimovitz is an “iconoclastic” musician, as they say: the kind who likes to appear with pop artists, play in pubs—that sort of thing. He is a very talented fellow, but also a somewhat eccentric one. I call as witness his recording of the Bach Cello Suites (reviewed in these pages some years ago). They are bizarre, the suites from Haimovitz’s hands—almost warped. But they are interesting, and not at all unmusical.
He has now made—for Oxingale, his own label—a recording called After Reading Shakespeare. Huh? It contains three works for solo cello, the first of which is the title work, composed by Ned Rorem in 1980. The other two works, Haimovitz commissioned: They are Mark Twain Sez:, by Paul Moravec, and Shadow, by Lewis Spratlan. And the CD has a little come-on: “Literary-themed suites for solo cello by three Pulitzer Prize recipients.” Does that sound like something to quicken the pulses of record buyers?
It’s not easy to write a piece for cello alone (or any instrument alone, other than the piano). It takes imagination, knowledge, and discretion. And all three of these composers, it’s good to report, have what it takes. They also have the cellist it takes, or at least one of them. Haimovitz can really make his instrument talk—or wail, or whisper, or sing, or whatever he wishes. The cello is his oyster. Of virtuosity, he has more than enough. And he plays here with real musical intelligence.
Shakespeare has inspired everything else in music—most prominently, operas—so why not a solo-cello suite? Rorem has taken passages from Shakespeare—both plays and sonnets—and written music “after” them. Now, if we weren’t told in advance, would we know that these pieces have anything to do with Shakespeare? Of course not. Such is the nature of program music—of music meant to depict or describe or embody something—without words. And no one has been more clear on this than Rorem himself.
In 2002, not long before his eightieth birthday, I interviewed him. And, in the course of that fascinating session, I asked, “Is music ever ‘about’ anything?” And he answered, “No. A composer will go to some lengths to tell you that something is about something.” But the answer is still no. “A piece without a text, without a vocal line,” he said, “can’t mean detailed things like Tuesday, butter, or yellow, and it can’t even mean general things like death or love or the weather, although a timpani roll can sound like thunder, and certain conventions about love come out of Wagner.” I’ve always loved that troika of Tuesday, butter, and yellow.
In any case, Rorem’s suite for cello is inspired by, or sparked by, or shaped by, the Shakespeare passages—and they are passages that cry out for music. And music of all types, Shakespeare containing every mood, style, thought. Rorem has done his work well. And he is a considerable figure, sex diaries and all. In that interview, I asked him, “Who’s underrated?” And he answered, “Well, me.” It is an argument.
I had not thought of Mark Twain as a fount of music—but Paul Moravec did, and he was right. He has taken eight passages from that author and written music reflecting them: transferring the passages, in fact, to music. Once you know what the passages are (and only then), you say, “Of course.” Take this line: “The source of all humor is not laughter, but sorrow.” Moravec seems to give us all that. And “Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.” Moravec has his cellist practicing, I believe—and then deciding, “Nah, I don’t think so.”
Try another passage—an extended one: “I had longed to be a butterfly, and I was one at last. I attended private parties in sumptuous evening dress, simpered and aired my graces like a born beau, and polkaed with a step peculiar to myself—and the kangaroo.” Once more, you hear all of that, or—knowing Twain’s words—imagine that you do, which amounts to the same thing. And Moravec does not limit himself to humorous, or semi-humorous, bits. He addresses, with Twain, love, madness, the meaning of life … At one point, he quotes Bach (in the wrong key), making him stand for what is right and orderly. And when Moravec waxes profound, he is not insufferable, if you know what I mean.
I was highly skeptical about Mark Twain Sez:—its concept and execution. But Moravec has pulled it off.
The literary basis of Lewis Spratlan’s work, Shadow, is murky to me. But I can quote him from the liner notes: Shadow “imagines that music has mass and can both cast a shadow and be hidden in shadow. The shadows, in any case, are not just replicas, but have all the variability of visual shadows, depending on the brightness of the light source, its angles, the kind of surface on which the shadow is cast, the number of light sources, and so on.” Can anything good, musically, come from such notions? Yes. Spratlan has written a sharp and well-crafted piece, or suite of pieces. It is in four movements.
If we’re looking for literature, we find a bit in the title of Spratlan’s second movement: “Rambo/Rimbaud.” (Yuk yuk.) I have a feeling the composer likes the second personage better. And of particular interest is the third movement, Variation and Sarabande. Note the unusual order. That which prompts the variation comes after, not before. In that variation, Spratlan is especially good in his use of rhythm, somehow stopping and starting without making the music in general seem halting (unduly so). And his sarabande is “achingly lovely,” to grab a cliché.
I accord Shadow what is, for me, a high accolade: I would like to hear it again. And the same is true of the other two works as well. Again, it’s not easy to write pieces—and these are long pieces, too—for a solo instrument. The three works here remind me a little of one-man shows in the theater, which exploit all an individual can do. And Haimovitz is ripe for exploitation. The idea of these “literary-themed suites”—Pulitzer Prizes aside—was a conceit, but a good conceit.