A review of the concert on November 16, 2003 by Richard Scheinin.
Before sitting down at the keyboard Sunday night, Robert Schwartz told his audience that he has enjoyed a “long-lasting kinship with French music.” And how. The pianist’s playing of works by Debussy, Franck and Poulenc at Le Petit Trianon in downtown San Jose was a pleasure. The music was floating, elusive, moodily enveloping — a perfect nightcap for the weekend.
At the outset, Schwartz said that he had chosen “three pieces that are entirely different” for his all-French program, one in a series of piano recitals sponsored by the Steinway Society. But though the three works may be distant harmonic cousins, they are still French cousins and Schwartz infused all of them, even the more heavily Romantic “Prelude, Chorale and Fugue” by Franck, with airiness and charm.
Schwartz, who lives in San Francisco and teaches at Skyline College in San Bruno, began with Debussy’s second set of “Images”, composed in 1907. He made it sound like music from an oasis far, far away — not just in another time zone, but in another emotional dimension. It was glittering and trance-like, and, quiet — a risky way to start a recital.
Yet Schwartz guided his listeners into the music’s soft havens, achieving a sense of sustained tone through careful pedaling, while also taking advantage of the small hall’s natural echo. His “Cloches à avers les feuilles” (Bells Through the Leaves) was full of distant bells and echoes of bells; it breathed and swayed, like drifting leaves.
At times, his fingers caressed the keys, summoning Debussy’s famous “hammerless” effect. But at other moments, Schwartz’s attack was crisp, full of splashes and squiggles of notes, summoning images of darting fish in “Poissons d’or” (Gold Fish).
In Franck’s work, composed in 1884, you can still hear echoes of Bach, as well as the chromatic harmonies of Wagner, yet you can also hear Debussy a-coming. Schwartz whacked out the top notes in zooming ascents, but there was still a sparkling quality to the music.
While someone else might choose to take the top of your head off with Franck’s mysticism, Schwartz didn’t get lost in the storm, maintaining an overarching clarity. At the conclusion, he simultaneously maintained a busy fugue along with a couple of earlier themes brought back by the composer — a deft, pianistic juggling act.
Schwartz concluded with Poulenc’s “Les Soires de Nazelles,” completed in 1936. The composer is said to have improvised the suite during long nights at the piano while vacationing in the French countryside. But this is very urbane music, suffused with the sounds of Parisian music halls and jazz. While Schwartz prefaced his performance by calling attention to the work’s “irreverence,” what mostly came through was its elegant, joyful songfulness.
