San Francisco Classical Voice

Betty Woo gave an intelligent program, thoughtfully conceived, if overly cautious, of twentieth-century piano music at the San Francisco Conservatory in a Faculty Artist Recital November 30th.

Drawing on piano literature from the first two decades of the century and of five nationalities, from composers Debussy, Granados, Schoenberg, Bartok and Griffes, the artist endeavored to give a didactic as well as musical experience. By underscoring the ways these composers coupled their traditional backgrounds with their ground-breaking twentieth-century musical sensibilities, as well as by highlighting the individuality of each, Woo gave her diverse program an exciting, unifying theme.

Woo plays with the same kind of intelligence she brings to her programming, and navigates the keyboard with fine technical prowess. However, in the transition from conception to performance, individual flavor was not evidenced, and the unifying sound throughout was heavy, even ponderous. Woo's playing is careful, thoughtful, serious, but misses the distinctive qualities normally associated with these compositions.

Rather than shimmering and effervescent, the opening of "Reflets dans l'eau," from Debussy's "Images," was overly delineated. She refers in her program notes to the "flow and improvisational character," of the Debussy, to the motives "often appearing in diminution, augmentation and inversion, just like the variations one sees in the reflection on the water," but her own interpretation was rather more choppy and referred more to the analysis of motives than to the motion.

Performers must be able to change character like actors on a stage. There must be worlds of difference between the impressionism of Debussy and the Spanish sauciness and flirtation of "Goyescas," Granados' romantic set of pictures from Goya's world ("Los Requiebros," "El Fandango de Candil," "Quejas o la Maja y el Ruisenor") The seductive flavor of this great Spanish music is subtly hidden in moments--of tiny pauses within phrases, of pushing notes together and then backing off, the musical equivalents of guile, and of a single raised eye-brow. Yet loud sections throughout maintained a bombastic quality, with the Fandango especially suffering from a pyrotechnical rather than dance-like approach. To be sure, there were lovelier quiet moments in Woo's playing, but long loud sections called for more shaping and variety.

Indeed, one was struck, throughout, with a dedication of this very able pianist to serious and forceful playing. One missed humor in Bartok's Rondo I (played along with his two Bagatelles, Op. 6), easily achieved with an easy upward ending of phrases; one missed the ultra-lyrical beauty of the first of Schoenberg's Drei Klavierstucke, Op.11, and subtlety interspersed with brightness in the Griffes Sonata.

One must note in fairness that the piano on which she performed sounded particularly harsh, especially in the upper-middle to upper registers, its overall tone lacking subtlety and warmth. Nor were acoustics aided by the Monday evening's low turnout. Given her reputation, command of the keyboard, and insightful, respectful approach to music it will be a treat to hear Betty Woo again, allowing herself more abandon and less caution.

(Margret Elson has dual careers as pianist, and as artistic counselor to artists and performers. She has been teaching and performing in the Bay Area for almost 30 years and is the recent recipient, with Elizabeth Swarthout, of an NEA grant for the CD "Twentieth Century American 4-Hand Piano Music.")

©1998 Margret Elson, all rights reserved