A review of the concert on January 27, 2008 by Gary Lemco.
Pianist Robert Schwartz, under the aegis of the Steinway Society the Bay Area, presented a successful recital Le Petit Trianon Theatre, San Jose, 27 January, a program that included Schubert’s B Major Sonata, D. 575; Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 4 in C Minor, Op. 29, “From Old Notebooks”; and five sections from Albeniz’ expressive suite Iberia. From the outset, Mr. Schwartz proved a fine technician and sober-minded acolyte of the music he champions, a combination of intellectual and digital facility. But his art also begs the question of whether “poetry” can be taught, if the academic and musically idiomatic are ever one and the same.
Schwartz opened with Schubert’s youthful B Major Sonata (1817), which adumbrates the late B-flat Major Sonata at several points while exerting its own youthful color and energies. Harmonically rather than melodically interesting in the first movement, the Allegro ma non troppo proceeded in the manner of an improvisation, jabbing impulses alternating with tender, _laendler_-like riffs that might have belonged to the composer’s almost limitless array of German dances and waltzes. The Andante emerged most lyrically until a middle section, step-wise and aggressive, disturbed the dream. A skittish syncope served the Scherzo, while the last movement, Allegro gusto, smacked of that Hungarian ethos that occasionally adds spice and flavor to the Schubertian mix.
The brittle, percussive sonority of Prokofiev’s Fourth Sonata (1917) served Schwartz to better, more incisive effect, its grudging lyricism and allusions to Moussorgsky more to Schwartz’s ironic temperament. Darkly impassioned, frequently obsessive — with plenty of repeated notes and _ostinati_ — the piece finds a malign consonance with the composer’s G Minor Piano Concerto, often incorporating the blazing _fioritura_ gleaned from both Liszt and Ravel, as cross-fertilized by Russian chromaticism. Schwartz brought to these angular, sinewy figures intelligence and bold strokes, a virile, active realization that savored Prkofiev’s paradoxically savage songfulness. The last section, Allegro con brio, juxtaposed the martial, untamed heart with flakes of fairy dust and music-box troika, a vaporous patina the composer would exploit in his Cinderella and Romeo and Juliet ballets
Schwartz preceded his performance of the Iberia Suite (1905-1908) with some affectionate remarks, summarizing the ethos of each of the five sections. While Prelúdio (Evocación), Rondeña, Málaga, and Triana enjoyed gracious and sympathetic treatment, only one section, Almeria, achieved the natural deep song (_canto jondo_) that made the music sound authentically Spanish. What Schwartz produced consistently were a host of correct effects — many quite in the bravura fashion of Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso — that never quite managed to lose a foreign accent. Guitar effects, modal exoticism, operatic declamation and tuttis notwithstanding, we still felt an emotional detachment that even Schwartz’s apparent veneration could not overcome, a feeling that he had mastered the syntax and grammar but not the fluent mystery behind the rhythmic niceties of execution. Still, a noble effort and patrician sensibility must be acknowledged; and his one encore, Debussy’s prelude Les Collines d’Anacapri, overtly expressed the visceral connection these two kindred spirits, both Romantic colorists, had for each other.
