A review of the concert on January 3, 2004 by Gary Lemco.
With the conclusion of his fourth encore, Chopin’s Fantasie-impromptu, pianist Jon Nakamatsu elicited applause and howls of delight from an electrified audience at Le Petit Trianonon Theatre, after a monolithic 4 PM recital, Sunday, January 4 that showcased a number of Romantic composers and their multi-faceted approach to the keyboard medium. Prior, Nakamatsu had finessed and caressed Chopin’s knotty “Heroic”; Polonaise, Schubert’s E-flat Impromptu, and Liszt’s liquid arrangement of Schumann’s “Widmung,” after having played music by Wolfl, Schumann, Mendelssohn, and Brahms, whose burly, even Bismarckian, F Minor Sonata had been punctuated by passion and poetry.
Jon Nakamatsu, a former Van Cliburn Gold Medalist, is clearly a local darling of the keyboard circuit. Nakamatsu responds with a platform presence and varied color palette that hearkens to the pianism of a by-gone age, of Hofmann and Rosenthal and Paderewski.
At Le Petit Trianon, Nakamatsu opened with a little Sonata in E Major by Joseph Wolfl (1773-1812), a virtuoso whose music begins with Mozart’s Mannheim rockets and ends with Mendelssohn’s filigree. Played for its crisp, light, and articulate etudes in thirds and sixths, the piece achieved a music-box sonority under Nakamatsu’s nimble fingers. Profound music it is not, but its Andante Cantabile had a serenity and a sincerity one associates with Carl Maria von Weber.
Schumann’s familiar Papillons ensued, a twelve-part suite of character-pieces and maerchen (fairy-tale marches) that commune with Schumann’s alter egos, Florestan and Eusebius, the aggressive and dreamy aspects of his inner being. Nakamatsu kept a restrained hand on these charming and elusive peices, some of which, like the “Butterflies” they are, flutter away in rhythmic wisps and acrobatic, anagrammatic intervals. The first half ended with Mendelssohn’s Fantasy in F-sharp Minor, a kind of Romantic’s homage to Bach’s chromatic line and penchant for chorale-preludes. Then, with pre-Lisztian abandon, the piece took off in a sustained frenzy of blistering perpetual-motion, disturbed by occasional sforzati of astonishing power. Quite an initiation for Le Petit Trainon’s new 9-foot Steinway, which withstood Nakamatsu’s onslaught without bursting into flames!
Finally, the program turned to the Third Sonata in F Minor, Brahm’s own reverent expression to Beethoven and to Schumann, the two masters he most admired. Rife with allusions to Beethoven’s “Appassionata” and “Hammerklavier” sonatas, as well as to Schumann’s introspective side, the Third Sonata is an alternately declamatory and amatory work, but Nakamatsu was more than able to give shape to its bulk and energy. The Third has one of the few honest scherzos Brahms ever wrote, a bit of tempestuous emotion that belies Hugo Wolf’s criticism that “Brahms cannot exult.” Having spent well over an hour to “warm up,” Nakamatsu had the filigree spilling out of his hands, molding phrases, playing with articulation, and generally exploiting a real joie de vivre in piano playing that make the Romantic repertory his particular artistic bailiwick.
