Piano Break: Lisa Spector

Lisa Spector at her piano with her black Lab Gina (from her home page)

According to my records, I have not managed to schedule viewing a recital in the Piano Break series, presented under the auspices of the Ross McKee Foundation, since the beginning of this past October, when a video recording of a solo recital by Dale Tsang was live-streamed through YouTube. I suppose this is a good sign of how the Internet has made it possible for the concert season to continue, even in the absence of physical presence shared by performer(s) and audience. Yesterday evening I returned to YouTube to join the virtual audience for the latest Piano Break recital, a solo performance by Lisa Spector.

Readers of my preview article for the fall Piano Break concerts may recall that, due to a severe fall in 2017, Spector sustained seven fractures in her right hand, leading to a series of four surgeries. In introducing her program yesterday evening, she explained that considerable time elapsed before she could return to a piano keyboard playing only with her left hand. Most of her program was devoted to the left-hand-alone repertoire, the major offering being Johannes Brahms’ arrangement of the D minor chaconne that concludes Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1004 partita for solo violin.

While it is clear that Brahms clearly understood the widely diverse approaches that Bach took to embellishing the chaconne theme (in the major key, as well as the minor), one could appreciate how Brahms had harnessed his own piano technique in preparing his arrangement. As a result, the music itself is very much a “partnership” between a present-day composer and one of his counterparts from the past. (The two-hand arrangement by Ferruccio Busoni, on the other hand, is all about Busoni’s prodigious virtuosity as a pianist. To engage a theatrical metaphor, Bach’s music is rather like a scenic backdrop in front of which Busoni delivers a passionate soliloquy.) Spector clearly grasped the nature of the Bach-Brahms “partnership,” delivering a compelling account of music in which both composers had equal say.

Of the shorter left-hand compositions, one was an arrangement and the other two were composed explicitly for the left hand. Those two were collected by Alexander Scriabin as his Opus 9: a prelude and a nocturne. Both of these are multi-layered studies; and Spector clearly knew how to account for all of those layers. (It is also worth noting that jazz trumpeter Art Farmer was so taken by the theme of the prelude that he arranged it for his own combo.) The arrangement was the one that Leopold Godowsky prepared of the first of the Opus 25 piano études by Frédéric Chopin. In terms of the relationship between the arranger and the “source composer,” Godowsky is much closer in spirit to Busoni than he is to Brahms. Spector’s account of Godowsky’s version was definitely impressive; but it was hard to avoid recalling William Shakespeare’s Hamlet criticizing an actor whose performance “out-herods Herod!”

Going beyond left-hand-alone, Spector also played a nocturne written for her by Zach Gulaboff Davis, whose execution requires eight fingers. Sadly, this was an audio-only recital, whose only image on YouTube was the concert program. This meant that those listening to the performance could not observe Spector’s keyboard work for this piece and appreciate Davis’ underlying structures. In terms of what was audible, Davis should definitely be credited with presenting his own approach to a nocturne without evoking memories of familiar nocturnes from the past.

Finally, Spector followed the Godowsky arrangement with two-hand accounts of two études played as Chopin composed them, the second of the Opus 25 set in the key of F minor and the twelfth (and last) of the Opus 10 set, known as the “Revolutionary” étude in C minor. The second of these is more familiar to most listeners. It is also a perfect example of how challenging Chopin could be without the “assistance” of further arrangement! Spector gave the étude a solid account, allowing the composer to have his own voice without sustained undue exaggeration from the performer.