McKenna Theater, State University of New York at New Paltz Brahms: Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 5
Salonen: Dichotomie
Berg: Sonata, Op. 1
Prokofiev: Sonata No. 7, Op. 83
Yefim Bronfman doesn't often perform in venues as small as this 400-seat theater, but he was invited to the University at New Paltz by his friend Vladimir Feltsman, who has taught there since his arrival in the U.S. in 1987. For the past four years, Feltsman has run a Piano Summer festival at New Paltz, combining individual instruction, master classes, a small competition and public recitals. Introducing this concert, Feltsman called Bronfman "our first visiting superstar." Bronfman lived up to his introduction.
Brahms's Sonata No. 3, composed when he was only 21, is a huge piece in five movements lasting more than half an hour. It's rarely performed, perhaps because of its extravagant difficulties. Bronfman, unafraid of any technical challenges, also has the ability to understand Brahms's structure and to see the music as a whole - then he fills in the details exquisitely. His playing of the opening movement was confident, powerful and amazingly accurate even in the frightening octaves at the beginning of the development section. But his subtle rhetoric and shading kept the music from becoming bombastic, and these characteristics remained constant throughout the work. His variation of tone in the Scherzo, from ringing bronze to softest velvet, was extremely effective, as was the exquisite pianissimo in the Intermezzo.
Esa-Pekka Salonen, best known as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, remains active as a composer. During the year 2000, which he took as a composing sabbatical, he wrote the large-scale Dichotomie in two movements. The first, "Mechanisme", is a lengthy toccata which starts out sounding like a synthesis of Prokofiev and Reich and gradually metamorphoses through several types of machine rhythms. "Organisme" starts out in a more gentle, Debussy-like style and gradually builds up momentum and volume. The music seems more ingenious than inspired, but it had enough interest to hold the listener's ear and the pianist's attention. The audience responded with considerable enthusiasm.
There seem to be two different interpretive approaches to playing Berg's early Sonata - the intellectual and the passionate. Bronfman opted unequivocally for the passionate, bringing out more of the music's late-Romanticism than its early atonalism. This was a completely convincing interpretation.
The announced program ended with Prokofiev's Seventh Piano Sonata, probably his most famous. Its difficulties may invite a virtuosic approach, but there is much more to the music than banging at the keyboard. Bronfman let the music build gradually, following Prokofiev's shifts of emotion subtly rather than hammering away at them. This tactic led to a devastating reading of the 7/8 finale which started with tension and ended with the composer's intended apocalypse. Not since Richter has this piece been played with such power and conviction.
After several curtain calls, Bronfman cheerfully remarked, "I've got the time if you do," and sat down to toss off a cheerful Scarlatti Sonata.
Bronfman is touring with this program, playing it, among other locales, at Tanglewood on 23 July and in Salzburg on 6 August.
