A review of the concert on March 21, 2004 by Gary Lemco.
Pianist Ursula Oppens, the unofficial “high priestess” of the modern keyboard, made a powerful impression in her recital Sunday, March 21 at Le Petit Trianon, under the auspices of the Steinway Society The Bay Area. Playing music by Beethoven, Scriabin, Harrison, and Ravel, Oppens confirmed her repute as a technician of speed and power who will occasionally yield to the poetic and lyrical impulse. It was only in her one encore, Debussy’s Reflets dans l’eau, that the graceful, romantic side of her character overcame the sheer motor power of Oppens’ digital prowess.
Oppens can trace her musical pedigree back to Leonard Shure, the Schnabel assistant who gleaned much of Schnabel’s ability to lessen the percussive force of the piano. Oppens, however, does not eschew the hard patina, and her opening Beethoven Sonata No. 16 in G, Op. 31, No. 1, boldly announced her adroit grasp of Beethoven’s witty play with syncopation and dynamic shifts that make this piece another example of his sense of experiment and improvisation, a kind of “Vulcan’s laboratory” for his fertile imagination. Under Oppens’ fast hands, this work, and virtually all of the pieces she played, emerged as virtuoso etudes, here on the G Major triad. Even the formulaic Alberti bass of the second movement had to yield to opens’ revisionist character, so its harmonies prophesied bits of Chopin and Bartok.
The liberation of dissonance burst forth in her firebrand performance of Scriabin’s Fifth Sonata, the F-sharp Major, Op. 53 (1907). This one-movement work, subdivided into five sections, is a based on a series of upward gestures and chords built on fourths. Paradoxically intimate and ecstatic, the piece is a post-Wagnerian “poem” to self-assertion and cosmic angst. Oppens captured the fury and restlessness of this wild piece, a work that convinced Rachmaninov that Scriabin had “chosen a wrong path.” One member of the audience quipped, “I had never heard of this guy, and now I know why.” Even in its moments of repose, some mystical juggernaut seems ready to rend the veil.
Two composers comprised the second half of the recital, Lou Harrison (1917-2003) and Maurice Ravel. Harrison is a California phenomenon in music, an experimenter influenced by Henry Cowell and elements of Eastern music. Opens played his Prelude from Suite for piano (1943) and three Sonata from a set of six for Cembalo or Pianoforte. The Prelude gave us asymmetrical treatments of Bach, while Sonatas IV, V and VI added pentatonic scales, modes and occasionally raucous obstinate to Scarlatti formulas for two-voiced structure. Idiosynacratic dances, plenty of trills, and disarming moments of lyric simplicity made Harrison a natural outlet for Oppens’ sympathies. Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales (1911) are his paean to the lost world of Schubert on the eve of WW I. More percussive than graceful, Oppens took most of the set too fast; consequently, the textures became monochromatic until the final waltz, which won Oppens’ pathos. La Valse, like most of Ravel’s large dance forms, explodes at the end, a perfect apotheosis of the Viennese sensibility, again swirling and aggressively clear in Oppens’ frenetic rendition, which left her and her rapt audience emotionally depleted.
