Chamber Music San Francisco Hosts Bronfman

Unless I am mistaken, my first encounter with pianist Yefim Bronfman took place during the first half of the Eighties. That was when I was working in Ridgefield, Connecticut, and taking every opportunity to get to Grand Central Station, which provided easy walks to both Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. This provided a more-than-generous share of opportunities to listen to piano recitals. I cannot remember what Bronfman played the first time I saw him; but I was on the edge of my seat trying to follow how he could maintain so much precision over such a broad range of dynamics.

Yesterday afternoon Bronfman appeared in Herbst Theatre for the latest Chamber Music San Francisco recital. The second half of his program presented seldom-heard music, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s four-movement Opus 37, given the title “Grand Piano Sonata.” The first half was probably familiar to most of the audience.

Bronfman began with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 332 (twelfth) piano sonata, composed in the key of F major. This was followed by Robert Schumann’s Opus 18 in C major, given the title “Arabeske.” The first half then concluded with the second set of Images (three pieces), composed by Claude Debussy.

Each of these three pieces had its own distinctive approach to rhetoric. Bronfman consistently mined the expressiveness of each of them in his performances. Most importantly, however, he never “overplayed his hand,” so to speak, knowing when to keep close hold on the reins and when to let them loose. I was particularly taken with his approach to Debussy, whose rhetoric often comes across as one passing gesture after another. Bronfman knew exactly how to convey the coherence among all those gestures.

1888 cabinet card portrait of Tchaikovsky attributed to Émile Reutlinger (from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

The Tchaikovsky sonata was another matter. One can definitely appreciate why it receives so little attention! This was, without a doubt, one of those pieces that lives up to too-many-notes criticism! There were times when I felt that Bronfman may have been playing too fast just to show off his dexterity, but I suspect that would be an unfair assessment. More likely, he decided that a piece performed so seldom deserved a bit of attention. At least I can say that I now know that sonata exists and that I have listened to it!

Bronfman took two encores without announcing either. The first sounded like one of Tchaikovsky’s shorter solo piano pieces, and I am not particularly familiar with that genre. The second was more familiar: the fifth, in the key of G minor, of the ten preludes in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 23 collection. This would have been an “old friend” for many in the audience; and it provided the opportunity for Bronfman to go out on just the right note (so to speak).