Pianist Natasha Paremski (from the SFP event page for this performance)
Last night in Herbst Theatre San Francisco Performances (SFP) launched the second week of its twelve-concert series to mark the return of live performances. The seventh of these offerings was a solo recital by pianist Natasha Paremski, who had previously been selected as one of the two pianists to launch SFP’s 40th anniversary season on September 27, 2019. Her portion of that program gave free rein to an abundant virtuoso display in her interpretations of music by Maurice Ravel (the finger-busting Gaspard de la nuit suite), Mily Balakirev (the shorter but equally demanding “Islamey”), and Serge Prokofiev (his Opus 22 Visions fugitives).
Last night’s selections provided more than ample opportunity for Paremski to showcase her technical skills. However, where the music behind all that razzle-dazzle was concerned, her performance only became significantly compelling with her encore selection. This was “Chandeliers” by Hyung-ki Joo, probably best known to audiences here as half of the madcap Igudesman & Joo duo with its hysterical assaults on not only the icons of the classical music repertoire but also the many mannerisms of those performing that music. Composed in response to the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, Joo’s poignant score reflected the rhetoric of shell shock that prevailed across the United States with an epicenter on the island of Manhattan. Paremski clearly understood Joo’s rhetorical devices, and her account of this short piece could not have been more compelling, particularly with the twentieth anniversary of that catastrophe less than two months in the future.
Unfortunately, the program that Paremski planned for her recital never rose to that same height of compelling the attentive listener. The first half of the program was devoted to music of Frédéric Chopin, highlighted by what might be called a “conversation” with Thomas Adès. This was followed, in the second half, by the first of Sergei Prokofiev’s three “War” sonatas, Opus 82 in A major.
The Adès contribution consisted of his Opus 27 set of three mazurkas, composed for a series of concerts marking the bicentenary of Chopin’s birth in 2010. Introducing this music to the audience, Paremski noted that Adès claimed that his collection was inspired by one of Chopin’s collections of three mazurkas; but he did not say which one. She selected the three Opus 63 mazurkas as the most likely candidate, interleaving them with the Adès compositions. Almost all of Chopin’s mazurkas are strikingly brief; and, were it not for the fact that at least half of them predated Louis Daguerre’s invention of photographic technology, one could almost take them for “snapshots,” intimate glances at individuals or settings. (In Dances at a Gathering choreographer Jerome Robbins actually set one of those mazurkas with a “snapshot moment.”)
Sadly that sense of intimacy eluded Paremski’s interpretations of both the Chopin and the Adès offerings. Indeed, she seemed to give little, if any, attention to the rhetorical aspects of her performances of not only the mazurkas but also the other two Chopin selections, the Opus 60 barcarolle in F-sharp major and the Opus 61 “Polonaise-fantasie” in A-flat major. As a result, the whole first half of the program established a disconcerting sense of “one damned thing after another,” which seriously undermined any potential for attentive listening.
The Prokofiev performance, on the other hand, was just plain brutal. It is worth bearing in mind that, during World War II, the Soviet Union evacuated many of its treasured artists (including Prokofiev) to the Caucasus, isolating them from any Nazi threats. (Most of us know that Dmitri Shostakovich was not one of those artists. As a result he lived through the Siege of Leningrad, and there is a famous photograph of him serving in a fire brigade.) Thus, to some extent, Prokofiev’s musical impressions of the War were abstract; but they still sustained a powerfully compelling rhetoric. Unfortunately, the substance of that rhetoric never managed to rise above Paremski’s banging away at her keyboard, as if extremity was the only relevant disposition.
As a result, her interpretation of “Chandeliers” emerged as the only significantly compelling offering of the evening. Her capacity for rhetoric clearly changed significantly since her last appearance in 2019. Perhaps, like many of us, she is still going through a readjustment of “business as usual” in the wake of over a year of pandemic conditions.
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