|
RECITAL REVIEW
Rangell, a Pianist Who Challenges
July 12, 2002
|
By Thomas Schultz
Andrew Rangell, whose recordings of Bach's Partitas and Goldberg Variations and the late Sonatas of Beethoven have received widespread critical praise, played an unusually stimulating recital Friday night at Old First Church that completely avoided the traditional center of the piano repertory.
Two major works of J. S. Bach were present on the program, but these were the rarely heard Overture in the French Style, BWV 831 and the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, BWV 903, a piece played in the highly personal manner by pianists of the older generation (Fischer, Schnabel, Kempff) that often meets with a more muted response from today's players.
Rangell's performance of both works was very free rhythmically, and didn't shy away from the impulsive, the abrupt and the breathless. He used the pedal to create a subtle blurring of harmonies in the Overture's Sarabande and played the first Gavotte with a quirky roughness, sensitive to the music's alternation of quick, light lines with thick chords and explosive ornaments. (It's likely that only at the Old First Church would the most chromatic passage in the Chromatic Fantasy be accompanied by the wail of a police siren.)
Rangell began the program with a work from 1610, J. P. Sweelinck's Variations on "My Young Life Has An End," a popular tune of the time, and continued with Carl Nielsen's Chaconne, Op. 32. Although there was much beautiful slow playing in the Sweelinck that emphasized the ebb and flow of the music, details in quick passages were often lost to all but the most focused listener. There was the almost constant presence in Rangell's playing of individual notes and line details brought into sudden prominence, then abandoned and replaced by other fragments. This required a listener more constantly active than usual, with attention always at the ready to catch this or that thread in the music's argument. Pieces whose effectiveness depended on a slow, gradual building up to a conclusive ending, like the Sweelinck or the Bach Fugue, came across less effectively when played in this manner. Clearly Rangell is a highly skilled and committed pianist, and puzzling that his reputation rests primarily on his playing of older music. Despite the informality of his manner during the recital — casual dress, a water bottle next to the piano, conversation with the audience and with his page turner — a feeling of formality and a certain quality of impenetrability gradually accumulated during his playing of the works by Bach and Sweelinck. Toru Takemitsu's Far Away (1973) and the Nielsen Suite, Op. 45, written in 1919, came through with electrifying directness.
The Takemitsu would be a good addition to any pianist's concert repertory, either on its own, or paired with the two darker, gloomy Rain Tree Sketches by the same composer. As Rangell played it, the music was colorful, episodic and virtuosic, notes and chords emerging from an impressionistic background with quick-moving unpredictability. Interestingly, this was the same manner of playing that seemed less successful in Bach and Sweelinck. I'd been totally unaware of Nielsen's Suite. After hearing Rangell play it, I agreed completely with his spoken remarks expressing dismay that the work is never played. Nielsen's overall plan for the piece is simple: three substantial movements interspersed with three shorter, fleeting movements, including a bi-tonal, tongue-in-cheek second movement and a fourth movement that's like a serene, lovingly cared-for pastoral landscape suddenly invaded by a couple of motley, destructive gnomes. The central third movement is a broad adagio that breathes a solemn, often quiet, grandeur. Much of the first and final sixth movements are so unique and fantastic in their pianistic writing, that I wondered what the music could possibly look like on the printed page. This work is certainly as fine a piece as the more frequently played Prokofiev Sonatas, Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues or distressingly popular warhorses by Ginastera and Barber. It's actually an advantage that Nielsen's work avoids the cumulative dramatic effect of pieces like the Prokofiev Seventh Sonata or the Fugue from the Barber Sonata. It's a different kind of music, more of a collage of colorful and strange events resonating unpredictably with remnants of older music, major and minor chords, contrapuntal textures, virtuoso gestures. This work of Nielsen's places him in the company of other less traditional early 20th century composers like Busoni, Satie, Janacek and Hauer, writing outside what the history books consider the "mainstream". And here, Rangell's style of playing was strikingly effective, as he sounded like a wildly imaginative jazz pianist. Old First Concerts deserves much credit for presenting concerts like this one so frequently to the public. Rangell's choice of repertory can serve as an example for younger pianists who, if they develop their playing and programming of this type of music, will soon find themselves bypassing their more established and prominent elders. (Thomas Schultz is a pianist and a member of the faculty at Stanford University. www.thomasschultzpianist.com ) ©2002 Thomas Schultz, all rights reserved |
