A review of the concert on September 26, 2004 by David Beech.
For the opening of the 2004/5 season, the Steinway Society The Bay Area offered an exciting program of 20th century music at Le Petit Trianon, San Jose on Sunday, September 26, 2004. The pianist was Stephen Prutsman, who has recently been appointed as an Artistic Partner of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra for the next three seasons, in which capacity he will be involved in concert programming, as well as playing concerti and conducting the orchestra from the keyboard, and performing chamber music. Moreover, he has been commissioned to compose two works to be performed by the orchestra this season.
As evidence of his compositional talents, Prutsman bravely followed in the footsteps of giants like Liszt and Rachmaninoff by including one of his own works in the program. He explained that the title Tannery Pond derived from a visit to a concert organization in upper New York state, and it seems that the pond in question was not at all as grand as Walden Pond, but was more of the nature of a swamp. Nevertheless, he was inspired to write this piece, originally for clarinet and piano, depicting 24 hours in the life of the swamp. We heard the dawn stirrings, a dance-like morning, a vigorous midday, a sleepy warm afternoon, and a melody that was unaccompanied, apart from a few occasional chords, during the nocturnal ending. The musical language employed some angular intervals, combined with reasonably singable melodic lines (possibly out of kindness to the original clarinetist). The playing used sensitive terrace dynamics to separate the different indications of life in the pond, and the overall impression was very satisfying –; it is a work one would like to hear again –; perhaps also, out of curiosity, in the version with clarinet.
The first half of the program consisted of the complete Miroirs of Ravel. The rarity of performances of all five pieces together is probably due not only to the considerable technical demands that each of them makes, but also to the overall similarity of style of the first three, which all feature Debussian half-hearted attempts at melody over evanescent accompaniments. Noctuelles (Night Moths) had some delightful wispy fragments of scales and arpeggios as the moths fluttered about; Oiseaux tristes began more flowingly until some violent screeches from the sad birds led via a long dissonance into slumber; and Une Barque sur l’Océan rippled along until bass rumbles presaged a magnificently violent storm, followed by sunlight glittering on the water and fading into a kind of delicate brilliance at the end. Two of Mr. Prutsman’s strengths were in evidence throughout these movements –; a glassy clarity in the upper parts, and a delightful treatment of the accompanying figurations at different levels of pianissimo, often with subtle use of the pedal to achieve effects that transcended the individual notes. Alborada del Gracioso (Morning Song of the Jester) provided a complete contrast with the drama of its Spanish rhythms (Ravel was born at Ciboure in France’s Basque country, right on the Spanish border). The passages of repeated notes were rapid and even, and the final flourish was so brilliant that the audience could not resist applauding. The final movement, La Vallée des cloches, exhibited more exquisite pedaling as the individual bell sounds at different pitches begin to appear in sequences and form a melody, subsiding to a few remarkable soft buzzing notes in the bass.
The program concluded with Stravinsky’s Trois Mouvements de Petrouchka, which the composer himself had produced from his ballet score as a vehicle for Artur Rubinstein’s prowess. This fiendishly difficult work received a truly fiendish performance. The Russian Dance was incisive and idiomatic in its Russian rhythms, with a witty interlude in the middle. The temperature increased with In Petrouchka’s Room, as quirky cascades of notes led to stiff puppet motions and noisy chordal tremolos. The grand finale of the Shrovetide Fair had everything –; phenomenal drive and precision with plenty of Stravinskian bite (even brutality), and astonishing scales emerging from nowhere while both hands seemed to be fully occupied in pounding out the melody. Even when the music was at its most frenetic, it was never quite deafening, a tribute to the pianist’s judgment, and to the robustness of the society’s recently acquired Steinway model D, which sounded good throughout the evening. All this was crowned by a spectacular final flourish that led to a standing ovation. The audience happily accepted a single quiet encore from the perspiring pianist, a gentle rendering of Irving Berlin’s What’ll I Do.
It was interesting to be able to compare Prutsman’s performance of the Stravinsky with that given in the same hall two years ago by Stanislav Ioudenitch (although it might be even better to avoid repeating a major work in the society’s programs so soon). Prutsman made the work a completely pianistic experience, emphasizing the percussive possibilities and the characteristic sonorities of the instrument, whereas my recollection is that Ioudenitch (even allowing for the fact that he was playing on the smaller Steinway model B) seemed to be aiming more to recreate the orchestral palette from the keyboard, without any loss of excitement. In any case, both were overwhelming performances, striking fear into the hearts of most of the many pianists in the Petit Trianon audience.
