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Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Pianists Andsnes and Grimaud in recitals
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Recitals Review
LEIF OVE ANDSNES, Sunday at Spivey Hall. www.spiveyhall.org. HELENE GRIMAUD, Tuesday at Emory University’s Schwartz Center. www.arts.emory.edu.
Two roaring young lions of the piano, Leif Ove Andsnes, from Norway, and Helene Grimaud, born in France, are commonly mentioned together.
Yes, both performed in Atlanta this week. Both are in their early 30s and deliver a complete package of goods — intelligence, virtuosity, searching interpretations and that alchemic ingredient: movie-star charisma. Yet they have little in common.
They’re also both on a new CD of Bartok piano concertos (conducted by Pierre Boulez, on Deutsche Grammophon) but that’s really as far as it goes.
Their recitals made that plain.
Andsnes is an extrovert. His sound is broad and open, his tone a bit glossy. He opened his Spivey Hall recital with Schubert’s D major Sonata (D. 850). We often think of late Schubert as “poetic,” where the composer distills ideas and emotions into a concentrated, multi-faceted statement. Andsnes made it seem the opposite, like it was a tell-all novel, not poetry. Music was merely a language, and he elaborated and explained every episode in an almost conversational fashion.
Indeed, for long stretches, I forgot Andsnes was playing the piano. Wasn’t it a vivacious dialogue, up there on stage, between pianist and composer?
Before playing Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” — in one of the freshest, most theatrical performances of it I’ve ever heard — Andsnes played a new piece commissioned for him.
Danish composer Bent Sorensen’s 16-minute “The Shadows of Silence” fused watery Impressionism with angst-driven Expressionism as a depiction of light and darkness. Its colors were shimmering shades of gray, like fast-drifting storm clouds over the shore. It ended ambiguously, with Andsnes asked to hum a tune over noodling chords, followed by a sunny resolution, followed by a quiet retreat into the distance. It felt beguilingly Scandinavian.
In complete contrast to Andsnes, who is an unfussy “modern” player, Helene Grimaud is an introvert at the keyboard, a quietly brooding romantic.
When she sat down to play Chopin and Rachmaninoff, Tuesday at the Schwartz Center, she smiled at the audience then seemed to tune us out; we were then invited to listen to her private meditations.
For Chopin’s Berceuse, she skipped the whimsy and dropped the sentimentality, looking for something deeper. With a powerful left hand, she made the rocking lullaby motion percussive, creating an unexpected volley of contrasts. If it’s genius to make a well-worn work sound utterly original, Grimaud has it.
Chopin’s Sonata No. 2 showed flashes of willfulness, a steely determination to have it her own way. It paid off: she sewed the disparate-sounding movements together as a unified whole.
She painted on a large canvas for Rachmaninoff’s Sonata No. 2 (in the superior 1913 version), handling the keys like de Kooning handled paint — with thick, assertive brushstrokes and dazzling color.
If Grimaud used to have any detractors — I’m not sure there are any left — their argument was that her interpretations can be scattered or undisciplined.
What these literal-minded piano mavens miss is the larger picture: Grimaud isn’t playing notes, she’s grappling with ideas. Not the least bit populist, she’s a philosopher at the piano.
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