Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University, South Bank
Thursday June 1, 2023
Garrick Ohlsson
This splendid American pianist was last heard here in 2019, appearing then for Musica Viva and getting his Brisbane recital in just before we all said farewell to live performances for some time. He’s back for another national series, kicking off in this city with an eclectic program of Schubert, Liszt and Scriabin with a new Australian commission adding spice to the mix in Thomas Misson‘s Convocations. Ohlsson is also offering a second program in his alterative nights in Sydney and Melbourne, as well as for Adelaide and Perth; in that figuration he will play Debussy’s Suite bergamasque, Barber’s Piano Sonata, the Misson novelty, and a slab of Chopin – the rarely-heard Variations brillantes, the Piano Sonata No 1, and the B flat minor Scherzo.
Yes, it would be rewarding to hear all that last group from the only American to win the International Chopin Competition (1970), but I don’t think we missed out that much with what we heard on Thursday evening. Ohlsson opened with the Schubert C minor Impromptu – the first of the Op. 90 set and the one that most pianists leave alone. This was followed by the Liszt B minor Sonata. After interval came the Misson and a clutch of Scriabin works: the C sharp minor Etude from the 3 Morceaux Op. 2, the D flat Major Etude from Op. 8, the C sharp minor Etude of Op. 42, the Andante cantabile that heads the Two Poems Op. 32, and the bursting-at-the-seams Piano Sonata No. 5.
Towards which this whole recital was aiming, it seemed to me. Ohlsson entered into the work with a certain sobriety; those odd little gruppetti of 5 with the first note missing that accelerate through bars 7 to 11 were not as brusque as other interpreters make them, although their return at bars 161 to 164 and from bar 451 to the end showed a remarkable ferocity, especially this last which found the performer twisting to face the audience in an unexpected gesture of pianistic braggadocio. Mind you, he was probably elated to get to the end of the composer’s vertiginous acceleration that starts at bar 401 and – for once – doesn’t stop for a meno vivo oasis.
For all its ecstatic intentions, this one-movement sonata (the first in this shape of the composer’s ten) holds itself together with a remarkably clear chain of material gestures and rhythmic shapes. In fact, for all the much-touted dynamic and emotional excess allied with highly demanding pianism, the work is clear in construction as a whole, if you can get past the stretches of chord-rich hysteria. Ohlsson took us on a finely graduated investigation of the score’s stop-start progress, demonstrating an admirable command of the composer’s vagaries and realizing fully the sonata’s flashes of magniloquence, like the thundering rapid left-hand octaves that feature in the Presto tumultuoso esaltato of bars 146 to 156, or the full-bodied peroration that explodes in bar 433.
Overshadowing the performance was the interpreter’s ability to take us along with him through the constantly changing landscape of this construct, where even the jittery off-the-beat right-hand chords that emerge so briskly at the first presto (bar 47) change to a more hectic, driven impulse as at the prestissimo that starts at bar 329. Indeed, Ohlsson captured with excellent skill Scriabin’s vital combination of languid harmonic opulence and urgent neurotic compulsiveness, this schizophrenia keeping us involved in what is still a robustly contemporary language.
Speaking of robust, the night’s first half focused on the big Liszt masterwork. In my tender youth, I was able to pick out the four potential movements that are said to comprise this large canvas but last Thursday’s reading came across all of a piece; you can hear where the materiel changes and is brought back for re-examination (or re-iteration, if you’re feeling unkind) but Ohlsson has the knack of finding some unification in the work’s presentation. It may be his insight owes something to a sublimated virtuosity as this pianist melds the meditative into the stormy with ease, as after the two mini-cadenzas in bars 200 and 204 where he shifted gear into a powerful Allegro energico C Major outburst; or, less obviously, the slow-burn from the F sharp Major repeated chords of bar 363 to a powerful climax across bars 393 to 396.
But it’s exhausting to get through; certainly for the executant, and even for an audience sufficiently primed to endure Liszt’s flamboyance and relentless magniloquence. I thought that there might have been two extra Es in bar 311 as Ohlsson emerged from another recitativo before dealing with a further 16-bar-long superimposition of two melodic elements, but that impression might have been self-generated. There’s no smothering a sense of disappointment in the fugato that starts at bar 460 and follows a resolute path to bar 599 before we get to the last, lengthy agglomeration where the writing becomes more and more complicated. Not that this substantial patch of working-out found the interpretation lacking and, if you grew impatient with the modulatory chains, you had this pianist’s almost flawless security to treasure.
Ohlsson exercised his habitual calm control over the Schubert impromptu, specifically its eventual triplet underpinning which many an interpreter allows undue prominence. For me, the most affecting segment of this reading came with the (only?) theme’s transference to the left hand at bar 60 under gently oscillating right-hand triplets; here was excellent dynamic management and a carefully shaped phrasing ebbing into a C flat Major quiescence. Actually, you could pick out several examples of sterling responsiveness, if the occasional oddity (the right-hand chord of bar 112 which sounded as though it had acquired an extra note) countered by a melting Winterreise conclusion from bar 193 onwards, minor alternating with major in an ideal instance of Schubert having it both ways – despair and consolation fused into each other.
Of the Scriabin studies, little is left in the memory. For many of us, the C sharp minor etude would have been our first encounter with the composer as it appeared in an AMEB list book (List D?) many years ago and proved easy enough to negotiate for its straightforward Chopinism. I didn’t gain much from Ohlsson’s treatment although I suspect it was included as part of the pianist’s way of preparing us for the coming sonata’s keyboard brilliance. You could admire his negotiation of the chains of chromatic thirds in the D flat Major etude, chiefly because the texture remained pretty clear with few over-pedaled washes along the way. Ohlsson’s approach to the C sharp minor piece proved a good deal less sharply defined, but then the harmonic shifts are gradual and closely-argued, so that even the left-hand change of metre to duplet crotchets in the study’s centre and near the end tend to muddy already thick waters.
A clearer texture spoke across the Andante cantabile in F sharp Major with Ohlsson smoothing out the quintuplets that emerge unobtrusively in bar 11 and become a constant element for much of the piece’s remainder. Still, this is whimsical country with a dominant right hand holding all the trumps in a very amiable colloquy that concluded these prefatory gambits which at least served the purpose of demonstrating how reasonable and later-Romantic this composer could be.
Misson’s new work enjoyed an introduction from the composer who pointed us directly towards a religious interpretation of his title, going even more directly to the core by speaking of the aspirational, Heaven-bound nature of his work’s right-hand while the left-hand matter stays firmly terrestrial. The opening strophes to Convocations impressed as rather obvious in both intent and statement, but the following elaborations and episodes proved more intriguing, particularly some moments of liturgical reference – not full-scale chorales but close enough to give a support to the composer’s suggestions of an abstract synod. Both composer and interpreter showed obvious signs of mutual satisfaction at the work’s end, and the composition itself did serve the purpose of suiting Ohlsson’s performance manner of benign, unshakeable confidence.
O'Connell the Music 