Concert Review – Boris Berezovsky plays Chopin, Godowsky and Mussorgsky
Esplanade - 18 Nov 2004
The recurring image of a wild-eyed bloody-mouthed goat (and other grotesque beasts of prophetic proportions) was oddly appropriate at the climatic movement of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, where the Slavic witch Baba Yaga (last seen in an anime incarnation in the delightful Spirited Away) rains down a torrent of hellish fury in modal curses that erupt from the unmuddied bass of a concert Steinway.
Character studies are by right less of a challenge for keyboard interpreters, compared to the philosophical abstraction of Beethovenian sonatas, but Mussorgsky's Pictures offer a double-fronted assault in its sheer disregard for pianistic conventions, even by late Romantic era standards (with a beguilingly simple score that belies hideously awkward leaps and turns) and the 500 pound musical gorilla that is Maurice Ravel's orchestrated version of Mussorgsky's masterpiece. The latter wee overblown concoction has resulted in nearly a century of misdirected expectations, disspelling memories of the raw vigour and stark textures of Mussorgsky's original gallerial strides.
These energies, however, were well rekindled by Berezovsky, who literally blended an art exhibition into the recital, with a projected screen behind the piano showing a a slide show of specially commissioned modernist paintings inspired by the music that was inspired by Hartmann's sketches (the bloody goat is by no means this author's drunken fancy). The opening Promenade contained more than a hint of hesitancy, as if the bulky composer were still shifting his weight on his feet, but the stride picks up pace and an assured purposefulness as the movement develops, with the hymn-like harmonies resonating to good effect.
A sign of what was to come, Berezovsky's gnome (or goblin) shatters the preceding swagger with unabashedly vulgar gestures punctuated by scheming scutterings that end with a frantic scramble for the door (or hellhole?) as day breaks. Great atmosphere and truer to character than the pompous, self-conscious renderings of most orchestras.
Day breaks with a reflective interludial promenade, sensitively played and leading seamlessly to the mournful minstrel who descants his plaintive song by an old Italian castle. To me the least attractive picture (in its long-windedness), the performance was fortunately less deadpan than it could have been in less imaginative hands.
A few brats at Tuileries were clear attention-seekers, but graceful games and bouncy chases were the rule in the gardens, and the children scampered away like flighty elves as a rustic bellowing approached. Because Mussorgsky left few indications of pitch in his score, interpreters have differed as to whether the player should view the oxen from a fixed vantage or ride astride on the cart at a persistent fortissimo. I prefer the comfort of a wayside deck, and Berezovsky shares this view with a finely-calibrated viewfinder that captures the infrasonic rumbles of distant bellows in unmuddied strides (no mean feat with this immensely chordal walk). The measured crescendo that peaked as the cartwheels ventured to a nose length's of the waysider was an exercise in high fidelity (one suspects Mussorgsky's cart was pulled by aurochs rather, so primeval were the steps), and as the path turns a corner, so does Berezovsky in his seamless foreshortening of the scene, as if the wayfarer were stepping away from the bank and out of the picture itself.
It would be quite a sight to actually see the prancing eggs on stage, but Mussorgsky's gossamer arrangement of the Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks, as executed by Berezovsky in bubbling colours, is an unmissable, and unforgettable, high point. The anti-Semitic caricature that followed was rather too impatient for my taste, with Goldenberg's rhetoric less sonorously contrasted than it could have been with his weaselly jester's incessant complaints.
The ensuing movements served to showcase Berezovsky's sheer virtuosity (in the frenetic round game of chattering marketwomen at Limoges) and tonal powers, as he overcame the keyboard's primary constraint (unlike wind and string instruments, the pianist cannot amplify a sustained note) in painting the cathedral depths of the catacombs in resonant chords that rung with martyrial strength and frailty. Death, however, was not yet to be overcome as the composer, now in phantom form, descended with Hartmann, in trembling vibrato, to be greeted at Hades' door by the infernal witch with iron teeth who dwells in a flighty hut endowed with chicken legs (totally weird, I know). All stops are pulled here and the elements unleashed and Berezovsky's demonic speed and intensity reached a satisfying transfigurement to the Great Gate of Kiev, here consecrated into a national house of worship (with apt projections of iconic images). The momentum and build-up of this octavial cacophony was largely sustained, with the fullest of piano tones and pacing that could just render Ravel's efforts meaningless.
Less you think I know nothing but to rave, the acclaim-worthy second half came after a disappointing session decidedly marred by poor, muddied sound, thanks in part to poor piano placement (?), inadequate tuning (a tuner worked on the piano throughout the interval and removed the cover in the end) and an over-pedalled performance. Chopin's etudes are the happiest of marriages between grand virtuosity and refined lyricism, a union of mutual support and service to aesthetic perfection. While technically immaculate (and sweat-inducing in his natural ease in running a hellish gauntlet) Berezovsky's playing could not be said to be the most musical nor the most passionate. The unadorned originals came across far more convincingly than Godowsky's overstudied transcriptions, where Chopin's soaring themes were drowned in a barrage of showmanship. And while pieces such as the left-hand only etudes were undoubtedly phenomenally played, they still beg the question, why?
The encores that greeted his magisterial Mussorgsky showed in the end how Berezovsky's aptitude for Romantic Mitteleuropa could reach rapturial heights when acoustics and inclination are both in place. Chopin's Minute Waltz was carried off with cheeky bravado and the concluding G-minor prelude by Rachmaninov demonstrated the pure pianistry that Berezovsky could pour from his arms when his heart and hands are in pure sync.
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