A review of the concert on April 10, 2011 by Gary Lemco.
Graciously adding three exquisite encores to her generous program of Beethoven and Chopin, a regal Dubravka Tomšič (b. 1940) played to a relatively modest but mesmerized audience at the McAfee Center in Saratoga, California, Sunday, April 10, 2011 to conclude the season series under the auspices of the Steinway Society the Bay Area. The three added pieces: Liszt’s _Valse Oubliée_ No. 1, the so-called “Minute” Waltz of Chopin — taken at full throttle — and Liszt’s Concert Etude _Gnomenreigen_ each received an aristocratic, poetic and blistering reading from Tomšič, who had already brought down the house with the four Chopin Ballades, each of which emerged as a dramatic entity in itself.
Tomšič’s first half of the program consisted of two Beethoven sonatas: No. 17 in D Minor “Tempest” Sonata and the Sonata No. 26 in E-flat Major, Op. 81 “Les adieux.” To some auditors, these may have seemed heavy, given the mass and proportion to which Tomšič articulated her poised, almost granite figurations. The opening arpeggio from the D minor Sonata suddenly burst forth in a torrent of conflicting affects in chiaroscuro, alternately obsessive and lyrical. Yet even within the context of these powerful impulses, Tomšič found moments of intimacy and repose. The Adagio seemed to traverse some eerie labyrinths of the spirit, the left hand suggestive of night terrors. The Allegretto, a moto perpetuo in Aeolian harp figurations, achieved a swirling momentum whose darker energies had the power of Charybdis to swallow us whole.
The 1809 “Farewell” Sonata, with its application of fifths in the opening chords, endured an even harder patina than the previous Tempest Sonata, with its own adumbrations of the later Appassionata. The through-composed introductory figures became an organic progression quite soon, with Tomšič’s imposing a grand architecture on the first movement even in the midst of a nervous nostalgia. The coda, unusually extended for a Beethoven sonata, received a thoughtful application from Tomšič, who played it for its absorption of the dual impulses of chromatic restiveness and fanciful recollection. The Andante expressivo eventually would move us to B-flat major, but not before some meandering harmonies delineate a sense of spiritual isolation. Then, Tomšič accelerated into the 6/8 Vivacissimamente, a heroic sense of reunion and grateful reconciliation, true, but with a defiance that had little use for the niceties of the Classical form.
Chopin’s set of Four Ballades (1834-1843) owe a certain structural debt to poet Adam Mickiewicz, and Chopin seems to have followed the details of the poem Konrad Wallenrod in the G minor Ballade. Tomšič played the piece for its Neapolitan drama, its wavering metric flux, and its often massive texture that would suddenly open up into a disarming sigh or lament. Tomšič’s capacity for the grand line and monumental gesture truly emerged in the F major Ballade, a rendition among the most mighty it has been my privilege to hear. The little folksong that emerges from the musings on C rocked quietly, but only to erupt in volcanic fury, Blake’s _The Tyger_ in undisguised passion. The A-flat major Ballade had Tomšič engaged in light banter set in three registers, but it too bursts into F Minor tumult that subsides into a series of knotty variations and shifts of register and dynamics. If Mickiewicz’s Undine provides the source of inspiration, she is a water-sprite of infinite capacity for character development in Chopin’s imagination, which Tomšič rendered into fertile poetry. The F minor Ballade seethes with melancholy and rhetorical grandeur at once, built upon the Mickiewicz poem _The Three Budrys_. Tomšič made a colossal edifice of this work, easily communicating its epic sweep, often intensified by Chopin’s iconoclastic sense of syncopes and counterpoint. Often in consonance with its contemporary pieces like the Op. 60 Barcarolle, the music would swell with a oceanic current, vast and deep. By the time Tomšič ended the blazing coda, the audience — which had consistently applauded after each of the distinct ballades — could barely contain itself for the fervor of their appreciation for this Grand Dame of the keyboard.
