San Francisco Classical Voice

Hélène Grimaud's piano recital Sunday night was a remarkable and lively demonstration of style versus substance. Or, rather, style, style, and more style, resulting in a highly stylized substance. If this was your cup of tea, as it appeared to be for many attending the San Francisco Symphony Great Performers Series at Davies Hall, then Grimaud's recital was exciting, technically impressive in terms of finger work and sheer, unflagging energy, and lavishly furnished with inflections and expressive devices.

There is no denying that Grimaud's playing has its very attractive elements, not the least of which is her independent and energetic imagination. It is also true that there were some serious problems with this recital, which included Busoni's transcription of the Chaconne from Bach's Violin Partita in D Minor, the Sonata Op. 110 by Beethoven, Brahms' Op. 117 set of pieces, his Rhapsodies, Op. 79, and three Etudes-Tableaux from Rachmaninoff's Op. 33.

Style was foremost from the very beginning. Grimaud strode confidently onstage like a heroic gamin. Her stage manner was stunning, as was her costume, a thin, black pants-suit that was both a witty and an attractive parody of male concert attire. She radiated confidence and Gallic elegance, bowing with a calculated awkwardness, legs akimbo and head flopped down, like a gawky teenage Harlequin marionette. Whenever she was not busy with technical passages, Grimaud also gazed skyward or in other ways conveyed passion and soulfulness. The gamut was run.

My curiosity was piqued by the design of the program. Though the interval of the tritone (three whole steps, slightly smaller than a fifth) can be an ugly sound that undermines harmonic stability, the first half of this program tilted on a tritone axis between two works that relentlessly exploited their opposed tonalities. The Chaconne (a huge series of variations on an unvarying 8 bars of bass line and harmony) by its very nature constantly reinforces its grounding in D minor. And the Beethoven is unusually saturated with the deep violet radiance of A-flat major. Was this design an act of great artistic confidence or one of artistic folly?

As it turned out, the question was never answered because it was a nonissue. Grimaud seemed to play only for the moment, indulging constantly in breathtaking rubatos, inflections, and pianistic tricks that made the idea of a trans-recital architecture academic. In a way the tritone between the Bach/Busoni and Beethoven was bridged because her intense lyricism and exaggerated freedoms were a unifying element. Interestingly, the Beethoven and Rachmaninoff fared best under Grimaud's approach.

The Chaconne needs an architect's sense and patience (indeed, it is the essence of architecture). And it was simply pulled apart by the constant tempo changes, exaggerated contrasts, swooning phrases, and magical floating pianissimos. The Bach/Busoni also revealed a problem that dogged this otherwise-formidable virtuoso all evening--she apparently misjudged Davies Hall, often overpedaling and driving most loud passages into an unvarying fortissimo that bordered on what piano teachers call "banging."

The Beethoven fared better, if it was taken on her own terms. When the very first chord was "broken," left hand playing before the right hand, I knew we were in for a unique, bold, and outrageous interpretation. Thankfully, the Opus 110 is so infinitely encompassing, so wide, so hospitable to caring and probing, that even Grimaud's indulgent Romanticism (indisputably caring and probing) often caused the ears to prick up at new inflections, new colorations. Her energy was invigorating in the first movement. And the final appearance of the slow movement in G minor was heartbreaking and beautiful (Grimaud's soft piano sounds are particularly lovely, and this passage was a felicitous marriage of her Romanticism and Beethoven's).

It seemed as if the pianist's lyricism and Brahms would also make a fine marriage. But this proved to be the low point of the program, vulgar and shocking, even if it weren't preceded by the title "Great Performers." The word "rubato" doesn't begin to convey what occurred. Tempos were stretched to breaking, ignored, accelerated, arbitrary and indulgent. Phrasing was often a parody of the old Rachmaninoff formula that began with a declamatory strength and faded away. Unnecessary accents and excessive pianissimos abounded.

The last of the three pieces in Opus 117 fared the best. For some reason Grimaud expressed the melancholy and hypnotic repetitiveness with simplicity, which worked. The two rhapsodies, Opus 79, were the worst -- the first, in B minor, was extraordinarily fast, pounded and overpedaled like a student performance. The second was a parody of pompousness, extended and distorted.

Except for the fortissimo pounding and overpedaling, the Rachmaninoff finally achieved a balance between substance and style, between the prickly, complicated demands of the music and the elaborate, complicated style of the performer. The encore was Rachmaninoff's beautiful Prelude in G-sharp Minor, Op. 23, touching and evocative if a bit overinflated. The effect in this final group was often stunning.

There was not much depth in this recital, not much sense of structure or line, nor a consistent and beautiful piano sound. There was a surfeit of moment-to-moment self-indulgence by an artist with enough charisma, wit, charm, and physical ability to get away with it. Perhaps Helene Grimaud had an off-night. Perhaps this repertoire does not suit her. Perhaps she is not a "Great Performer."

(Mack McCray is a concert pianist and a member of the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.)

©2000 Mack McCray, all rights reserved