San Francisco Classical Voice

RECITAL REVIEW A Loving Tribute Of Beethoven

March 4, 2001

Peggy Salkind

By Vera Breheda

The concert presented by Peggy Salkind on Sunday night at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in memory of Milton Salkind was a celebration of love and the power of music. Milton was her late husband and the Conservatory's President. She opened the program expressing her personal thoughts on music: "Music is indispensable to life, and music is the breath of love. Music generates energy and hope, and music brings people into a state of Being rather than a state of doing."

What greater representative of the power of music than Beethoven? This program offered three different aspects of his style, beginning with the Sonata in D Major, Op. 6 (for piano four-hands) and the solo Sonata in E flat Major, Op. 7, and continuing with the song cycle An die ferne Geliebte Op. 98 and the Diabelli Variations, Op. 120.

The lyric, two movement four-hand Sonata, op. 6, played with Thomas Turinia, was a moving tribute to the Peggy and Milton Salkind Four-hand Duo. Beethoven's pupil, Carl Czerny, said of Op. 7 (1796-97) that this was the work that ought to have been called the Appassionata. The harmonic plunges, bold contrasts of dynamics and register, and jarring syncopations create intense excitement. After this comes a magnificent second movement, Largo-con gran espressione whose silences are as expressive as its rich harmonies. Then follows a good-natured Allegro, and a mysterious Trio, in E-flat minor. The finale is a beguilingly lyric rondo, suddenly interrupted by a long B-natural that plunges the music into a stormy C-minor middle section.

Even though I felt Salkind's strong sense of commitment to this music, I failed to grasp the unique character of each of these movements. The first movement, marked Allegro molto e con brio, was played instead as a simple Allegro, greatly reducing the feeling of youthful, high-spirited energy and boisterousness. Only in the recapitulation did the tempo finally pick up. In the slow second movement, the Largo didn't seem largo enough--not enough for the "pregnant" pauses that come in the opening measures, setting the mood for Beethoven's "con gran espressione." The intensity that Beethoven creates in his slow movements can be compared to white heat. But in the Finale, the wonderful lyricism did come through.

Transcendence Over Worldly Loss

The first through-composed song cycle, An die ferne Geliebte, Op. 98, (to Beethoven's "immortal Beloved"), became a model for cycles by Schumann and many others. Feelings of love, yearning, despair, and finally hope and deliverance are beautifully conveyed against the backdrop of the eternal, peaceful presence of Nature. The final, thrice-repeated "heart bursting" ("was ein liebend Herz geweiht, was ein liebend Herz erreichet") is an ecstatic song of man's transcendence over worldly loss, a transcendence attained only by a loving heart. Peggy Salkind was a sensitive collaborator, setting the mood very beautifully with tenor Jimmy Kansau . Although the qualilty of Kansau's voice was lovely, a greater connection with the words was needed for emotional projection of the text.

The monumental Thirty-Three Variations on a theme by Diabclli, Op. 120, is the culmination of Beethoven's pianistic output. Beethoven was amongst a number of composers invited by Anton Diabelli in 1819 to write one variation on a waltz theme he had written. Although Beethoven is said to have dismissed the idea, scornfully mocking the theme as a "Schusterfleck" (cobbler's patch), by 1820, Beethoven interrupted his work on the Ninth Symphony to write twenty variations (including the massive fugue), adding the additional 13 in 1823.

By reducing the very banal waltz-like theme to its melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic elements, or to put it differently, by cracking its genetic code, Beethoven succeeded in creating a set of variations of awesome diversity and originality. The exploration and manipulation of the musical elements constitute the high intellectual drama of these variations. Salkind confronted the daunting task of immersing herself in this high drama with conviction and love. Each variation, musically and emotionally unique, she depicted forcefully and with clarity. Especially outstanding were variations 20-24 and the heart-wrenching variation 31, just before the final fugue.

Certain questions of tempi were again raised, such as in the Presto of Variation 10 and the alla breve Allegro of the final fugue. A sense of greater rhythmic tautness in Variations 5 and 13 would have brought out their whimsical, almost comical character, a character that Salkind did aptly capture in the "Leporello" variation, No. 22. By the time the last variation had transformed itself from a waltz to a minuet, the transcendence of this music to �heavenly' and �other-worldly' was complete.

(Vera Breheda is a pianist who has performed as soloist and chamber musician throughout the Bay Area, the east coast and Europe. She teaches privately and has served on the faculties of SUNY at Stony Brook, Indiana University, Diablo Valley and Los Medanos Colleges.)