A review of the concert on November 20, 2010 by Gary Lemco.
Braving the cold, rainy weather in San Jose, an audience devoted to the Steinway Society the Bay Area heard Venezuelan virtuoso Sergio Tiempo in recital at Le Petit Trianon Theatre, Saturday, November 20, in a program including music by Haydn, Beethoven, Liszt, Ginastera, and Chopin. By the time Tiempo ended with his two encores, the Chopin F Major Nocturne, Op. 15, No. 1 and a fiery dance by Astor Piazzolla, the enthralled listeners felt that a true keyboard wizard had appeared, a musician of probing intellect and Latin temperament in the manner of the Chilean master Claudio Arrau.
Tiempo opened with Haydn’s popular Sonata No. 37 in D Major, whose dashing and colorfully pert appoggiaturas and scale passages made brilliant vehicles for Tiempo’s fleet fingers, which added wit and rounded architecture to the mix. The second movement, marked Largo e sostenuto took its emotional cue from C.P.E. Bach and the empfindsamkeit style of overt sentimentality, the textures often declamatory by way of the French baroque. The last movement Presto indulged in light staccati, a presage of Beethoven’s own witty dialogues for both hands.
The groundwork for Beethoven having been laid, Tiempo presented a nobly romantic rendition of the Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp Minor, Op. 27, No. 2 “Moonlight.” The stretched-out arpeggio that constitutes the whole first movement assumed its “fantasia” character at the outset, a study in sostenuto, mysterious and supple. The Allegretto, generally stately and poised, could transform into a martial air in D-flat whose sforzandos could testify to a restrained virility that ran rampant in the closing Presto agitato. Here, Blake’s “Tyger” let loose upon the senses, furious and vehement, pedaled and breathed in clear, startling, resonant periods by the hot blooded Mr. Tiempo.
Two relatively brief works followed to round off the first half: Liszt’s 1849 Consolation in D-flat Major, the most enduring of the set of six Liszt wrote as homage to Chopin. An intricate, intimate study in crossed hands and cross rhythms, the piece relishes its sighing gestures and lilting diminuendi, the brief cadenza — leggierissimo — in the late pages a decorative nod to the passing of the Polish master. Then, ending with decisive splash, the Three Argentinean Dances (1937) of Alberto Ginastera, with its two outer dances of frenzied pampas energy, and the middle movement — Dance of the Sad Maiden — a nocturne in lilted syncopes. The last, Dance of the Clever Cowboy, literally slammed the Steinway into the ground, galloping and bounding across the keyboard with sudden accents, punching staccati, and wild glissandos, enough to lift us out of our collective saddles.
The entire second half devoted itself to twelve Chopin etudes, cannily and evenly selected between the Op. 10 and Op. 25 so as to create pairs of studies in digital and melodic refinement. Nothing effete in Tiempo’s renditions of the blistering C-sharp Minor, Op. 10, No. 4 study or the whiplash Op. 25, No. 9 in G-flat Major. The opening from each set, Op. 10, No. 1 in C and Op. 25, No. 1 in A-flat Major, set a tone of sturdy, galvanic musicianship, sensitive to the shape and sterling tone of the piece Tiempo maneuvered through their respective demands on stretch, pulse, and articulation. The Op. 10, No. 2 in A Minor and the Op. 10, No. 6 in E-flat Minor punished the fingers with slow chromatics in the course of an unbroken melodic line. The last two etudes, the Op. 10, No. 12 in C Minor “Revolutionary,” and its companion in the same key from Op. 25, both could be called “Ocean” in Tiempo’s realizations, which simply exploded over the surface of the keyboard in symphonic contour. The real tone-poem of the set, the Op. 25, No. 7 in C-sharp Minor, held the audience in thrall, a quality Tiempo enforced this evening by segueing immediately to his various composers, enfolding many a piece in the silence that sublimity demands.
The recital — by the way — Tiempo dedicated to his new baby, a two-month-old daughter whom he admitted he sorely missed.
