A review of the concert on February 22, 2001 by Dr. Thomas Wendel.

It was a dark and stormy night up at the Villa. The concert was set for 7:30 in the Carriage House. It began at 8:15 in the Villa itself. The utterly charming, lovely pianist informed the audience that so entranced was she with the intimacy of the Villa living room that she asked for the change of venue. Cynics were heard to guess during intermission that her motives were less romantic. Because of the relative paucity of attendance, Ms. Grimaud must have demanded the change else she would be playing to a half-or-so filled Carriage House. Whatever the truth of the matter, was the forty-five minute wait worth it? I would have to say that yes, it was. The program’s highlights were high indeed. Even so, it was not an entirely satisfactory evening of music making. The program began with Busoni’s knuckle-breaking transcription of the great Bach Chaconne in D Minor from the Second Partita for Unaccompanied Violin. The transcription is one of the towering virtuosic showcases of the piano repertoire and in Ms. Grimaud it more than met its match. From the triumphant opening of the grand theme, hers was a granitic, one might even say a Himalayan achievement. The piano turned into a veritable organ as one mountain top after another was revealed to the amazed eye/ear of the onlooker. The reading was nothing less than monumental

Following a short pause, Grimaud launched into Rachmaninoff’s Twenty Variations on a Theme of Corelli. Published in 1931 as Opus 42, this is the Russian master’s last piano work. Its theme is not by Corelli; rather, it is a medieval folk theme that, amazingly enough, is an almost exact replica of the Bach Chaconne theme and is in the same meter and key. Indeed, the juxtaposition was purposeful, as Ms. Grimaud pointed out in her brief opening remarks. The variations run the gamut of Rachmaninoff’s always fertile pianistic invention. Russian hymns, amusing scherzos, adamantine marches, mournful funeral music, storms and even the pastoral passages were projected with a fire and brilliance that seemed unceasing. By the conclusion of the work, and with it the first half of the program, the tightly compacted audience seemed to be collectively exhausted. The problem with this pianist was fully exposed by the very opening notes of the E-flat Intermezzo, the first of the Brahms Opus 117 Intermezzi that introduced the second half of the program. Here is a pensive, a lovely, truly beautiful melody, autumnal, philosophic. But no. BANG! came the opening notes. It was a Busoni-like transcription of the true intent of this music. It was not until the very end of this intermezzo and likewise the coda of the third intermezzo that some peace and quiet descended over the hall. These tiny moments were very beautiful indeed. And then without a break came the two Brahms Rhapsodies, Opus 79. These can take the Grimaud pounding treatment far better than the Intermezzi. Even so, by this time, Grimaud’s relentless attack had become tiresome. Again, Grimaud ran the two works together; no sooner had we come to a quite beautiful rest in the lovely B-major coda of the first rhapsody, than we were swept away into the second. I am convinced that persons unfamiliar with this music, at its conclusion thought they had heard only one long rhapsody. Applause was loud and long and brought forth two encores. The first was one of Rachmaninoff’s so-called Tableaux or Etudes-Tableux. I believe, though I am not sure, that it was the third from the set of 1916-17. And I would have to take a long guess at the amusing second encore as a work of Poulenc, but do not ask me to bet on it.