San Francisco Classical Voice

In the program notes for the wonderful concert Robert Helps played last Monday at the San Francisco Conservatory, he wrote that Gabriel Fauré and John Ireland (the two composers on the first half of his program) have in common a lack of big pieces. This would suggest that their music is essentially intimate, not suited to big halls, and that this may be part of the reason they have not "caught on" with mainstream performers.

When treated as salon music, the two barcarolles by Fauré that began the program can sound monotonously beautiful, or beautifully monotonous. But they are pieces that seem made for Helps' exquisite control of dynamics and the wonderful sense of ease that pervades his playing. He began with concentrated expression, directing attention to the subtlest nuances right from the start. Surprisingly little physical movement is visible in his playing, and he produces a line that runs like a thread from first note to last, woven with poetry, passion and delicacy. The exquisitely timed swells that crested and finally broke at the climax of the ninth barcarolle, and the Barcarolle #5 in F# minor was played brilliantly with all the contrast and color that could be asked for. Helps proved that Fauré's music, while maintaining its atmosphere of Parisian elegance, could be effective in the concert hall.

Helps has always used his magnificent technique in the service of the overall structure and the projection of what Roger Sessions called the "long line" of the piece. This was the most convincing of the four live Helps performances I've heard of the Ireland Piano Sonata (1918). This piece, complex for all its tonal folk qualities, seems as if it would be much more direct and "emotionally accessible" than it really is. In the outer movements the tidal waves of sound threaten to dissolve in chaos (but never do). The slow movement is a song of nostalgic lament, full of tenderness and restless longing--a most affecting post-war elegy.

An unusual succession of three pieces at a pianissimo level formed the middle section of the recital. My favorite was the exquisitely brief Ravel prelude--a single phrase ending with a sigh, effecting a palpable silence in the hall. Hilton Kean Jones' Salve Regina sustaining the mood of rapt contemplation, was followed by A Mixture of Time, Helps' own piece for piano and guitar, which achieved the near-impossibility of balancing the two unfairly matched instruments. It sounded truly magical in the context of the two other pieces. Guitarist Gyan Riley discovered deep reaches of stillness in the work, playing with a lyrical sensitivity that matched Helps'. I only wish that Helps had gone all the way and played the piano "accompaniment" with the piano lid open.

Chopin's Second Sonata closed the recital and I quickly realized that this was not the piece I thought I knew. The first movement was genuinely agitated, and the development section evoked a terrifying struggle. When the second theme recurred, signaling the recapitulation, it seemed to collapse rather than find a point of repose. The scherzo had fire and abandon, and its trio, filled with deep song, felt like the lyrical center of the work. There was certainly little repose or "peace" in the third movement, which seemed to "hurry," until I realized that there was no longer any motion at all.

The trio of the "Funeral March" offered little relief. It provided a view of heaven more in line with the discoveries of modern astrophysics than with 19th century romanticism. The last movement, surely the most "modern' piece of music written up to that time (1839), remains quite strange and perplexing today. Helps' performance was breathtaking, as the uncanny current that flowed between him and the instrument swept in and out of its strange harmonies.

The encore, Leopold Godowsky's study based on the second of Chopin's etudes, op. posthumous, was another foray into the golden age of piano playing. Pianists are not supposed to play like that anymore. Helps made us forget that.

(Jerry Kuderna is a pianist who teaches at Diablo Valley College and is a host (with Sarah Cahill) of the Berkeley TV program, Stop, Look, and Listen.)

©1999 Jerry Kuderna, all rights reserved