United Kingdom Brahms, Schubert, and Liszt: Alexandre Kantorow (piano). Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, 8.3.2023. (MB)
Brahms – Piano Sonata No.1 in C main, Op.1
Schubert-Liszt – Der Wanderer, S 558/11; Der Müller und der Bach, S 565/2; Frühlingsglaube S 558/7; Die Stadt; S 560/1; Am Meer, S 560/5
Schubert – Fantasy in C main, D 760, ‘Wanderer Fantasy’
I’ve come just a little late to the get together for Alexandre Kantorow, the primary French pianist to win the gold medal within the Tchaikovsky Competition, in 2019. (A French winner appears unlikely this 12 months, for sadly apparent causes.) This was my first encounter with Kantorow, however I actually hope it won’t be the final. His Queen Elizabeth Hall recital revealed each transcendental virtuosity, very a lot within the line of Liszt, but additionally a first-rate musical thoughts.
Having roughly given up on the Brahms piano sonatas as not for me, it was gratifying to be proven how mistaken I had been. Kantorow’s efficiency was a type of occasions when one heard a piece with which one had lengthy had difficulties, solely to marvel what these difficulties may ever have been. Grabbing the primary motion by the scruff of its neck, he took Brahms’s opening Hammerklavier references for the purple herring they’re, revealing a piece emphatically moderately than by the way in vibrant C main, Beethovenian precedent as a substitute furnished by the Waldstein Sonata. The second group proved correctly tender, taking its go away from Schumann, but in half-lights already strikingly mature. Muscularity and freedom have been each readily obvious; so too was a coherence shocking not a lot in itself, however moderately in that it was achieved by a command of line that by no means took the simple, formalistic route and was all of the extra convincing for that. A turbulent growth part swept us right into a recapitulation filled with poetic magic. The second motion was darkly Schubertian. At occasions, its freedom was comparable to to sound quasi-extemporised, but it was at all times certain of the place it was heading. Quietly shocking, it discovered highly effective distinction in an brisk scherzo whose trio melted considerably but by no means unduly, earlier than constructing equally – at the very least – in energy. Like its predecessor actions, the finale would possibly on the floor have appeared rhapsodic, but was despatched in gloriously Romantic freedom essential to a far-reaching conception of the entire, with all of the method required to carry that off.
There adopted a collection of 5 Schubert songs as organized for solo piano by Liszt. How each one sang — and sighed – every completely different in character but comparable in virtues technical and extra broadly musical. Veiled but filled with tone, Der Wanderer and Der Müller und der Bach spun narratives and fantasy worthy of each Schubert and Liszt, privileging neither, the primary track after all getting ready the best way for Kantorow’s later efficiency of the Wanderer-Fantasy. Shades of Schubert impromptus, heard by a Lisztian prism, have been manifest in Frühlingsglaube, albeit with ornament that would solely be Liszt. Schubert’s mysteries in Der Stadt have been multiplied by Liszt — and stored multiplying. Here was really sepulchral Romanticism. Am Meer, poised just like the track itself, between the secure and the hallucinatory, proved equally but in another way poignant, as if it have been experiencing and but revisiting without delay.
The Wanderer-Fantasy opened with brighter tone, recalling the opening of the Brahms — as, after all, did the important thing. It was no much less freely virtuosic than both Brahms or Schubert-Liszt, and Kantorow once more labored the magic of getting us hear Schubert at the very least partly through Liszt, maybe through Brahms too. Familiar themes and progressions sounded newly minted. Likewise the track on the fantasy’s coronary heart sounded each historic and newly conjured. Finely formed while at all times sounding spontaneous, it culminated in twin crowns of fugato and coda that, understandably, left the viewers eager to listen to extra.
Mark Berry