Another Dim Shenson Spotlight Performance

Pianist Mao Fujita (photograph by Doville Sermokas)

Yesterday evening saw the second performance of the fifth iteration of the Shenson Spotlight Series. Like the first performance, which took place about a month ago, this was a solo piano recital, performed this time by Mao Fujita. The “pillars” of the program were the first sonatas composed by Ludwig van Beethoven and Johannes Brahms. The Brahms selection was complemented by music of Richard Wagner, the most salient of which was Franz Liszt’s transcription of the “Liebestod” music from the opera Tristan und Isolde.

Once again, however, the promise of the program selections did not rise to a level of satisfying attentive listening. Indeed, where any dynamic levels from forte to above are concerned, Fujita’s motto seemed to come across as, “Nothing succeeds like excess.” Even in early Beethoven (Opus 2, Number 1 in F minor, the very first “numbered” sonata) Fujita deployed a wide dynamic range, which came across as little more than overwrought. All of the elegant gestures in this sonata, which are so evident when played on a period instrument, were lost in the muddle. Things were not much better in the Brahms sonata, which, for me at least, recalled Peter Schickele’s joke about having a black belt in piano. (I do not think Brahms would have appreciated that joke!)

Fujita concluded the evening with one encore, unannounced and unfamiliar.