Last night the San Francisco International Piano Festival returned to Old First Presbyterian Church for the final Solo Recital Series program. The recitalist was Parker Van Ostrand, who was just named inaugural recipient of the American Liszt Society Fellowship. As expected, his recital program included the music of Franz Liszt. More explicitly, Ostrand devoted the entire second half to Liszt’s B minor piano sonata.
The sonata may be the closest that Liszt ever came to following traditional structure. Nevertheless, he is still being Liszt. One can identify the different movement structures as the performance unfolds, but the entire sonata is played without any pauses. It is worth noting that Igor Levitt’s recording of this sonata occupies three successive tracks with no interruptions, meaning that watching a display of the track numbers may assist the attentive listener in recognizing the overall structure.
Actually, once one gets a handle on distinguishing the embellishing from the embellished, the overall structure is strikingly straightforward. The middle is occupied by an Andante sostenuto followed by a Quasi adagio. The primary theme is the Allegro energico, which both precedes and follows this middle “block.” All that remains is the Lento assai that begins the entire sonata and marks the return of the Allegro energico. Ostrand delivered a clear account of this structure, and that delivery provided a satisfying account of the fire-breathing expressiveness that Liszt had written into the score.
Parker Van Ostrand beginning his encore selection before things start to get wild (screen shot from last night’s streamed performance)
As might be expected, last night’s audience insisted on an encore. More often than not, pianists tend to respond to the flamboyant call of Liszt’s sonata with a bit of soothing quietude. Ostrand, on the other hand, seems to live by the old Al Jolson motto: “you ain’t heard nuttin’ yet!” Without giving any introduction, Ostrand dove into the concluding All Turca movement that concludes Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 331 sonata in A major.
However, it did not take long to recognize that, rather than playing Mozart, he was presenting the “Concert Paraphrase on Mozart’s Turkish March,” composed by Arcadi Volodos and a particular encore favorite of Yuja Wang. Since Wang was a recent Resident at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (where Ostrand is about to begin his third year), one might guess that she had a hand in Ostrand adding this piece to his encore repertoire. Having already heard Wang play this piece on one of her visits to Davies Symphony Hall, I was more than delighted to listen to another pianist have fun with this music; and I was not at all disappointed.
It was also interesting to note that the prankishness that concluded Ostrand’s recital could also be found in his opening selection, the Hoboken XVI/52 in E-flat major, Joseph Haydn’s final solo piano sonata. This required a lighter touch than the audience would later encounter in Liszt and Volodos, but Ostrand knew exactly how to reflect the playfulness that the composer clearly had in mind.
The remainder of the first half of the program brought a bit more sobriety to the occasion, along with an appreciation of different approaches to technical challenges. Haydn was followed by Frédéric Chopin’s Opus 23 Ballade in G minor. Ostrand then wrapped up the first half with the “French dynamic duo” of Claude Debussy (“Brouillards,” the first selection in the second book of piano preludes) and Maurice Ravel (the solo piano version of “La Valse”). Unless I am mistaken, that version of “La Valse” was on one of Wang’s earliest albums. This was very much a program of interleaving paths, both aesthetic and intellectual. However, thanks to Ostrand’s acute capacity for expressiveness, one could also just sit back and enjoy the ride.
No comments:
Post a Comment