A review of the concert on December 12, 2004 by David Beech.
The 28-year-old pianist Andrew Russo gave a highly successful performance of music by living composers at Le Petit Trianon, San Jose on Sunday, December 12, 2004. This was the first recital in a new venture by the Steinway Society The Bay Area to offer more varied fare outside their normal subscription series, and was enthusiastically received by an audience of healthy proportions.
The program was built around two works by John Adams and one by George Crumb, interleaved with works by two Dutch composers and one American who are all friends of the pianist. Although, as we shall see, there was quite some variety in the program, it was all in a fairly consistent musical language that gave an integrated portrait of Russo’s preferences rather than attempting a wider survey of contemporary piano music. There was little striking dissonance or counterpoint, but rather a paean to minimalism, with its ostinato figurations often using diatonic intervals, and with lengthy pedaling to achieve cumulative sonorities.
Russo produced a solid tone across the full dynamic range, and from top to bottom of the keyboard, relying generally on rhythmic vitality and clarity of phrasing –; and phenomenal accuracy –; rather than subtlety of inflexion to hold the attention. The Trianon’s Steinway model D again proved itself a worthy partner in conveying the composer’s intentions and the artist’s personality, and indeed in the Crumb pieces revealed hitherto unsuspected secrets of its own inner workings.
The work in question, A Little Suite for Christmas, A.D. 1979, had been performed by Russo in the 2001 Van Cliburn competition, which apparently made him the first entrant to play “inside” the piano. As he explained, there was nothing wrong with the piano — he was not trying to fix it or break it! The work lacks only political correctness, since it seems to be designed solely for long-armed pianists on grand pianos, but here we had the perfect match and we were treated to an authoritative performance. The seven movements illustrating the Nativity are inspired by the Giotto frescoes that Crumb had seen in Padua. Reminiscent of Messiaen in spirit, but on a smaller scale, the suite was beautifully balanced, with gradually increasing use of special effects. The opening slow parallel chords led to use of the left hand to damp the bass strings, and soon the normal use of the keyboard was supplemented by both hands reaching across the strings to produce harmonics, harp-like arpeggios, pizzicati, and glissandi, muted notes, and strange distant rumblings. Amazingly, all of these effects contributed to the reverent atmosphere, and a highlight was the haunting version of the Coventry Carol in the penultimate movement.
The program had opened with an entertaining piece, designed to dispel any fears the audience might have harbored about modern music. The well-built Russo appeared onstage in an outfit resembling black pajamas, and described how the composer, Jacob ter Veldhuis, was a rock guitarist who became fascinated by television “infomercials” when visiting the United States. The title of the piece, “The Body of your Dreams”, referred to an advertised means of achieving “the perfect abs”. The piano provided a beautifully synchronized commentary, sometimes with a heavy ostinato, or with convincing jazz rhythms, or with delicate arpeggios, accompanying a CD that played fragments of the infomercial such as “No sweat! … oh, wow! … uppity, uppity … three pounds of muscles … press this button … wow!”, leading to an erotic “Oh, my gosh … makes my insides tickle” and a hazy fade to “The Body of your Dreams”.
Derek Bermel’s “Fetch for Speaking Pianist” was another work involving speech, this time with Russo himself speaking (and acting) from the piano bench. The roles of speech and music were reversed this time, with the words commenting on the music as the pianist played a few measures in one interesting style or another, and then doubted whether that was what he really wanted to be doing. The musical fragments were intriguing, and the verbal asides were sympathetically uttered.The other work by a Dutch rock/classical musician, Gerard Beljon’s “Beat”, turned out to be the virtuoso event of the evening. It was receiving its U.S. première, and deserves to give San Jose a spot in musical history on this account. Described as a Toccata with funk sections, it was full of the repeated notes and rhythmic drive typical of a toccata, with extreme rapidity and dynamic extremes and episodes of orchestral grandeur, leading to a climax that carried the excitement of the finale of Prokofiev’s 7th Sonata to the next level, which would previously have seemed inconceivable. This brought the first half to a close with a well-earned ovation.
The pair of “Gate” compositions by John Adams take their name from the analogy with electronic gates, which are switches that cause sudden changes. ‘There is “mode” in this music, but there is no “modulation”, as the composer has said. Written in 1977, these are pivotal works for Adams, being the first in which he was strongly influenced by Minimalism, and yet began to find his distinctive voice as “a Minimalist bored with Minimalism”. His special art is in introducing new ideas just before the listener becomes bored by repetitions, and in the first part of the program, Andrew Russo gave us the brief introduction to the style provided by “China Gates”. This was written for young pianists, and “oscillates … with extreme delicacy” between the Lydian and Phrygian modes at the gate points. By contrast, in Adams’ words, “Phrygian Gates is a behemoth of sorts and requires a pianist capable of considerable physical endurance and with an ability to sustain long arches of sound”, a challenge to which Russo proved himself fully equal as he devoted the entire second half of his program to it. Although it was not easy at a first hearing to follow this ‘tour of half of the cycle of keys, modulating by the circle of fifths rather than stepwise à la Well-Tempered Clavier. The structure is in the form of a modulating square wave with one state in the Lydian mode and the other in the Phrygian mode’, the momentum and invention of the rippling waves were evident to all. A slow section used variously pulsing chords that kept the same top note while changing the harmonies below, until this was interrupted by demonic trills and tremolos, leading to a calmly walking interlude before the final presto and its sudden end on a chord that left ambiguous resonances floating in the air.
Russo received another standing ovation, and graciously closed with a Chopin mazurka, played with insight and rhythmic vitality.
