This afternoon the Baltimore-based Shriver Hall Concert Series (SHCS) launched the second of the five concerts to be presented in its spring season. Following today’s live-stream the video will be available for on-demand viewing until the end of the day next Sunday, February 28. The program is a solo piano recital by Daniil Trifonov recorded at the 92nd Street Y. Technical production was by Adam Abeshouse, a name that may be familiar to those following the video documents of performances by another pianist, Simone Dinnerstein.
Sadly, this video had one of those fatal flaws that is particularly hazardous to any viewers not familiar with the piano repertoire. The last of the program’s three selections was blatantly mislabeled. As can be seen from this screen shot, the final selection of the program was identified as Johannes Brahms’ Opus 1 (first) piano sonata in C major:
Unfortunately, this not the music played on the video. Trifonov’s final selection was, indeed, a Brahms sonata; but it was the Opus 5 (third) sonata in F minor. Because this is the most frequently performed of the composer’s three solo piano sonatas, I suspect that many viewers caught the error; but none of them made note of it in the chat window for the YouTube Web page. The error can also be found on the Program/Notes Web page on the SHCS Web site.
If some feel that this is just nit-picking, I have to confess that it is a nit that deserves to be called out for even the most familiar program selections. I believe that, at any performance, there is always someone for whom a particularly selection is a “first encounter.” If that someone has been profoundly moved by the performance, chances are that (s)he will seek out other opportunities to listen to music again. Such potential enthusiasts do not deserve to be pointed in the wrong direction.
That is particularly true in the case of Trifonov’s Brahms selection. All three of the sonatas were published between 1853 and 1854; and Robert Schumann’s first account of Brahms’ music appeared on October 28, 1853 in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (new journal of music), which Schumann co-founded. However, while the first two sonatas serve up impressive displays of virtuosity, Opus 5 provides one of the earliest signs of Brahms beginning to find his own way. This is particularly evident in his departing from the usual four-movement form, adding an Intermezzo between the Scherzo and Finale movements. That Intermezzo is actually a reflection on the thematic material from the second (Andante espressivo) movement, almost as if Brahms felt a need to rethink what he had previously said before proceeding to the final movement.
From a technical point of view, Opus 5 is almost like a wild beast defying anyone to tame it. Nevertheless, Trifonov rose to every technical challenge that Brahms had posed, making sure this his reading was more a rhetorical journey than merely a display of a panoply of keyboard skills. Sadly, I have had few opportunities to listen to this sonata performed in concert. This video left me hoping that Trifonov will bring this part of his repertoire with him when it again becomes possible to visit San Francisco to perform a recital here.
The preceding offerings on the program were equally impressive. He began with Claude Debussy’s three-movement suite entitled simply Pour le piano (for the piano). This was followed by Trifonov’s one selection from his most recent album, Silver Age, Sergei Prokofiev’s Opus 17 Sarcasms. Composed in 1912, this suite would be followed by the Opus 22 Visions fugitives, which was completed in 1917, a more extended journey through the rhetoric of miniaturist rhetoric. (By way of context, the miniaturist approach taken in Anton Webern’s Opus 5 set of five movements for string quartet was composed in 1909.) In many respects the opportunity to observe Trifonov’s physical approach to Prokofiev’s Opus 17 enhances the listening experience beyond what was offered on his audio recording.
The Debussy selection predated both Webern and Prokofiev. Pour le piano was published in 1901. All three of the movements have titles found in the keyboard suites composed during the Baroque period. However, any similarities between Debussy’s three movements and those composed by Johann Sebastian Bach or George Frideric Handel are purely coincidental. Indeed, while the technical structures of all three of these movements are impressively intricate, one has to wonder whether Debussy might have been playfully thumbing his nose at his imposing predecessors. Trifonov did not try to play up that possibility. Rather, he focused on the richness of structure in each of Debussy’s pieces, making sure that the subtle embellishments registered as effectively as the thematic material being embellished.
This was, without a doubt, a memorable program on all fronts; and SHCS really needs to be called out for bungling what listeners should expect to remember!
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