San Francisco Classical Voice

Those who like the subdued, introverted Beethoven were richly rewarded at Russell Sherman’s piano recital on Friday in the Concert Hall at San José State University. Those who prefer the exuberant Beethoven, brimming with energetic outbursts and jolting accents, had to wait until the last piece in the program, Op. 57, for at least partial satisfaction. The renowned pianist played an all-Beethoven program that consisted of the Sonata in E major, Op. 109, the Variations Op. 35, and the sonatas in E minor,Op. 90 and in F minor, Op. 57 ("Appassionata").

The pondering Beethoven was presented at his best in the Sonata Op. 109 with which Mr. Sherman opened the program. This masterpiece of Beethoven's late style lent itself most naturally to Sherman's proclivity for contemplating at the piano. He gingerly and deliberately (and with a visible physical strain) molded the material without letting himself or the listeners be swept away by any emotional outpourings. The Sonata Op. 90, performed at the beginning of the second half of the recital, was also played in a thoughtful tempo rubato and with a winning poetic flair.

Sherman's pedaling, however, was a different matter altogether. Beethoven's intricate polyphonic lines, energetically-abrupt chord releases, and sparse textural episodes typical of his late style were all smudged by Sherman's exorbitant pedal. True, Beethoven himself had been occasionally described as a pianist who pressed the sustaining pedal rather generously. But the composer was compared to his predecessors, whose articulation was more clipped and delivery more polished. And the pianos he played had different, rapidly-decaying sound. Today, the tone-sustaining power of the modern Steinway requires a particularly careful approach to pedaling.

To be sure, there were some magical pedal effects in this performance. I was taken by the shimmering mist of the last pages of Op. 109 and by the wonderfully melting-away E-major endings of both Op. 109 and Op. 90. Most of the time, however, the overindulgent pedal obscured or even made unintelligible many fine points of Beethoven's writing. Especially in the first movement of Op. 90, I also frequently felt the lack of any kind of pause: general, rhetorical, breathing, pregnant, anticipatory, and the like.

Sherman's meditative mood, which prevailed during most of the evening, eventually gave way to a relentless and captivating drive in the fast movements of Sonata Op. 57 ("Appassionata"). The forceful thrust of the first movement was especially striking. Paradoxically — and this is true of the rest of the program — the volume never rose above a solid mezzo forte, and many sforzandos were either downplayed or omitted altogether. But the slow-burning intensity of the two allegros became even more compelling when it was contrasted with lyrical episodes in the first movement and fleeting cantabile lines in the finale.

The "Appassionata" brought the program to a rousing conclusion, with the audience, appropriately roused, awarding Sherman a standing ovation. There were no encores.

(Anatole Leikin's articles have appeared in various musicological journals and essay collections; he has also recorded piano music of Chopin and Scriabin. Professor Leikin currently serves as an editor for The Complete Chopin — A New Critical Edition (Edition Peters, London) and chairs the Music Department at University of California, Santa Cruz.)

©2002 Anatole Leikin, all rights reserved