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RECITAL REVIEW
September 19, 2006
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Poetry and Camp By Heuwell Tircuit
Pianist Mack McCray’s August recital for Noontime Concerts had to be postponed until last Tuesday — a month later, his program at Old St. Mary’s Cathedral proved to be well worth the wait. McCray’s broad interest in keyboard repertory always provides for a surprise or two, and that was certainly the case with his excavation of the once popular Concert Arabesque on Themes of 'On the Beautiful Blue Danube' Waltzes by Andrei Schultz-Evler. As an icebreaker, McCray opened with Schumann’s Arabesque in C Major, Op. 18, and the unusual Haydn Sonata No. 13 in G Major.
The Polish pianist-teacher Schultz-Evler (1852-1905) was a student of Carl Tausig, and therefore of the Liszt school. He spent much of his career as a teacher in Kharkov, and he published about 52 piano pieces or songs along the way, plus a number of concert parodies. All of his compositions emphasize virtuosity at extreme levels — and I mean extreme. His takeoff on Strauss’ most famous waltz carries it to ridiculous heights. It falls into the “I dare you to try to play this!” category, along with works like Liszt’s Don Juan Fantasy, Balakirev’s Islamey, and Boulez’s Second Sonata. To scale any of those works you need a total command of keyboard technique, plus a lot of courage — or perhaps, foolishness.
Yet, McCray blazed through it, barely mussing his hair. It was the kind of performance you might expect from Horowitz playing Liszt's takeoff of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The trouble is, as with the Liszt, Schultz-Evler’s score is of questionable merit as a piece of music. After all, there’s a lot more to a piece of music than its tunes. There are other important factors to be taken into account.
Essentially, what Schultz-Evler did with his interpretation, was to encase Strauss’ tunes in a thick geegaw of flashy, endless figurations. It never lets up, not even for a minute. Naturally, romantic pianists loved that sort of thing. But the piece fell from grace even with those types during the late 1920s. I’d never heard it before, and I am grateful to McCray for the exposure, along with my admiration for his astounding facility. But if I ever sit through it again, I hope that I can resist (once again) my strong inclination to laugh out loud during the proceedings. The piece is piano camp at its wildest.
McCray opened with Schumann’s beautifully lyric rondo, the pinnacle of his early piano works. McCray tastefully caressed the piece with rubato and little shifts of tempo, and what emerged was the Arabesque played in a way that hinted at improvisation. Considering Schumann’s breakneck composition style, it seemed appropriate — a lovely, adoring tribute to the piece’s worth. This was followed by the Haydn sonata. The piece is unusual in several respects, not least of which because it is in four movements rather than the expected two or three. In fact, Haydn wrote only one other four-movement sonata, the tiny First, which also happens to be in G Major. In addition, there’s that strangely somber slow movement in G Minor, typical for house music of the period, as was placing the Minuet second in order of the four. But aside from matters of form, the piece seems oddly ahead of Haydn’s other compositions during that period, especially considering that it was intended for his rather conservative royal patron. As an early work, the sonata could just as well have been intended for the harpsichord as for the early piano. McCray took account of that, playing in tempo with light, crisp finger work, and bare use of the sustaining pedal — think in terms of Glenn Gould’s Bach recordings. McCray is clearly a thinking pianist as well as an ivory tickler. (Heuwell Tircuit is a composer, performer, and writer who was chief writer for Gramophone Japan and for 21 years a music reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle. He wrote previously for Chicago's American and the Asahi Evening News.) (Note: The upcoming October and November Noontime Concerts were published in time for the recital, and they include some promising events. The six October programs are designed as a mini-festival of Russian music. Slavyank opens that series with a program of works for male chorus on October 3 at Old St. Mary’s, and on Oct. 18, there’s a program of Mussorgsky, Stravinsky, and Rachmaninoff by the Russian Chamber Orchestra. At the end of November, there’s an all-Liszt program, played by the distinguished Hungarian pianist Jenö Jandó. Those, and much else bode well for the local public.)
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Mack McCray
