Once Again, Encores Prevail Over the Program

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco Symphony presented the final program in its Great Performers Series. The performer was pianist Evgeny Kissin. Sadly, this was the latest installment in a series of recitals in which execution of the encore selections prevailed over the presentation of the published program. Readers may recall that this was the case when Lang Lang visited Davies as a Great Performers soloist, presenting engaging “encores” on either side of his performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 988 “Goldberg” Variations at the end of March. Over in Herbst Theatre, about a month ago, the recital by baritone Matthias Goerne and pianist Seong-Jin Cho was similarly problematic until Goerne presented “Bist du bei mir” (from Bach’s Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach) as his encore.

Kissin presented four encores to his wildly enthusiastic audience (the first time I saw so much enthusiasm packed into almost all available seats). Of those the first two made for the most satisfying listening. While, during the program itself, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 540 Adagio movement in B minor brought overwrought rhetoric to even the slightest marks on the score page, the encore selection of the K. 485 Rondo movement in D major engaged the attentive listener with every note, through a clear rhetorical understanding of every phrase. Similarly, Ferruccio Busoni’s piano transcription of Bach’s BWV 659 organ chorale prelude for “Nun komm’ der Heiden Heiland” (now comes the gentiles’ Saviour) brought a rich interpretation to the original organ setting, while Carl Tausig’s arrangement of the BWV 565 toccata and fugue in D minor, which began the program, was interpreted by Kissin as one blustering gesture after another.

The original autograph score (first page) of Chopin’s Opus 53 polonaise (courtesy of the Heineman Music Collection of the Pierpont Morgan Library Dept. of Music Manuscripts and Books, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

The remaining two encore selections were compositions by Frédéric Chopin to complement the all-Chopin second half of the program. The program concluded with the Opus 22 “Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise,” which was preceded by seven mazurkas selected from the Opus 7, 24, 30, and 33 collections. The first of the Chopin encores was the Opus 53 (“Heroic”) polonaise in A-flat major. The evening then concluded with a Chopin waltz with no mention of key or opus number.

The one work on the program that was not “reflected” in an encore was Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 110 sonata in A-flat major. This sonata is probably best known for its unconventional overall structure, including a fugue, which is subsequently repeated in inversion. The music presages departures from conventions yet to come, but all Kissin could do was bang his way through each of the episodes with the fugal material suffering the most.

Those seeking attentive listening experiences in a piano recital were, sadly, left disappointed.