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RECITAL REVIEW
March 30, 2003
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By Jerry Kuderna
The examples of superlative pianists like Glenn Gould, who gave up playing concerts in order to go to a “higher calling,” making recordings, and Sviatoslav Richter who did just the opposite, demonstrate the difficulties inherent in such extreme decisions. Frederic Chiu's concert Sunday at Dominican University made me think of these legendary artists as I tried to come to grips with his playing. Out-of-the-way venue, a strange piano, unflattering acoustics, odd program, mandarin dress and ponytail — not what you'd expect from a leading artist of his generation.
Chiu began with a lengthy spoken introduction in which he drew a line in modern piano music back to Chopin, suggesting that Debussy and Ravel, and even Prokofiev, were part of the same lineage, despite the evolution of the modern piano into “sound-machine, rather than a musical instrument.” This, I suspect, ruffled some of the piano teachers in the audience. He had set himself an awesome task, especially as the “machine” before him, despite its familiar shape and color (“Falcone” was blazoned in gold on its side), was apt to produce some unfamiliar sounds.
If the Chopin Barcarolle sounded percussive and harsh, it might be attributed to Chiu's coming to terms with a not-very-congenial instrument in an acoustic setting that could not show it off to best advantage. His tone was lovely in the levels from ppp to mf, (which is the way Chopin was supposed to have played it) but above that it did sound, well, a little like Prokofiev, in his less cantabile moments. Or maybe having just told us that the piano was basically a percussive instrument, he hadn't yet convinced himself that it could really sing.
Next came three Debussy Preludes from Bk. I. “The hills of Anacapri” began magically, and some very clear voicing of the Neapolitan tune in the middle section could be heard, but then the tone became clangorous in a very un-Debussyan fashion on the last page. (I imagined hearing maledictions against the piano coming from the stage.) “Footsteps in the snow” served as a respite, being mostly pianissimo throughout, and the heartbreaking phrase marked “like a sad regret” led to one of the most resigned codas I've heard in this miniature masterpiece. Chiu let loose a torrent of sound in “What the westwind saw,” and the hurricane-force climax sent seismic tremors through the hall. He was clearly beginning to warm up, launching into his next group without allowing any applause. Chiu had chosen two additional quiet Debussy works, in which the composer evokes the Orient of his dreams. “And the moon descended on the temple that was” (“Images” Bk. II) and “Pagodas” (“Estampes”) sounded like Zen meditations, with master Chiu posing koans in the form of musical phrases that would hang in the air, tantalizing the ear with a distant and cold beauty. We were being ushered into another world, one far from that of the public piano recital. The piano had become, indeed, that strange “sound producing machine” capable of infinite nuances, but whose meaning was ultimately unknowable. Without break, Chiu switched to Ravel. In two pieces from Miroirs he was suddenly, as athletes say, “in the zone.” The “Boat on the Ocean” captured every motion of the water from the slightest ripple to huge waves with miraculous ease. Even more captivating was “Alborada del Grazioso.” The castanets chattered, the jester sang, and in the riotous laughter there was an orchestral range of color that made me totally forget that I hadn't much cared for the piano ten minutes earlier. It sounded like a different instrument. Frederic Chiu demonstrated that it is the pianist who produces the sound, not the piano.
The second half began with the pianist's own transcription of three pieces from Prokofiev's film score, Lieutenant Kije, a satirical work that is full of orchestral effects that one would not think of transferring to the piano. This odd bit of programming was turned to advantage and worked in The World According to Chiu (the score was on sale on the lobby after the performance). The “Romance and Marriage” of the non-existent officer Kije were great fun, making it impossible to keep a straight face through an absolutely deadpan yet utterly gleeful performance. The program concluded with Prokofiev's 7th Sonata, which has became one of the staples of the 20th-century repertoire. It sounded completely fresh here, and all too appropriate, for it was written when the Russians were fighting against Hitler during W.W.II. I felt all the suffering and tragedy faced by people who have known war. The pitilessness and deep sorrow etched in the cantabile passages did show that Prokofiev was, in fact, a legitimate heir of that other great chronicler of battles written for the piano, Frederic Chopin.
(Jerry Kuderna is a pianist who teaches at Diablo Valley College.)
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Frederic Chiu