Fredrik Ullén, piano
Saturday 12 May 2001
The Great Hall at Cooper Union, New York City
Ligeti: The Piano Etudes
György Ligeti's Piano Etudes have garnered a solid place in the keyboard repertoire, with more and more young pianists rising to their technical and musical challenges. So far the composer has completed seventeen etudes: Book One's six etudes appeared in 1985, while the eight of Book Two date from between 1988 and 1993. Book Three is in progress, with three works completed to date. They add up to about 55 minutes of music, enough to fill a short recital program - providing, of course, that one can find a pianist with boundless resources of technique, intellectual concentration, and sheer stamina.
Fredrik Ullén is exactly that kind of pianist, as he proved beyond a shadow of a doubt in his New York debut recital, a program containing all the Ligeti Etudes played in numerical order. The 33-year-old Swedish pianist (who also pursues a parallel career as a neuroscience researcher) "warmed up" with the composer's 1956 Chromatische Phantasie, a work whose dark, quiet moments, cloudbursts of virtuosity and spiky tone clusters add up to an oddly coherent piece. While Bartók's shadow can be detected (vaguely) in this music, the younger composer's bold brushstrokes rightly hold the listener's focus.
By contrast, Ligeti's Etudes draw inspiration from Conlon Nancarrow's studies for player piano and from the additive rhythmic effects and polyphonic ensemble playing found in sub-Saharan African cultures. Using the sustain pedal sparingly, Ullén's ultra-secure fingers charted the composer's rhythmic webs with the utmost physical ease and no hint of outward showmanship. Clarity, logic, and carefully orchestrated dynamics were this pianist's top priorities; he communicated the music's cumulative force so eloquently that the audience forgot about virtuosity per se. Ullén has further refined his interpretations since setting them down on disc - as revealed, for instance, in his adroitly dispatched scale passages in "Fanfares," and his mesmerizing legato in "L'escalier du diable." On the other hand, he tended to fuss over lyrical selections like "Cordes à vide" to the point of drawing more attention to the performer than composer.
The question remains as to whether or not all of Ligeti's Etudes work as a single concert program. Book One does, but the similarity of density, texture, and tempo between most of Book Two's selections might be better appreciated by a general audience in smaller doses. One wishes, though, that Ullén had announced his encore, a lovely piece and presumably one by Ligeti. But which one?
© andante Corp. June 2001. All rights reserved.
