Emanuel Ax, Yefim Bronfman (piano)
8 March 2005 - Folly
Theater, Kansas City
Any performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring is an event. It's a
work, like Picasso's Guernica or Dostoyevsky's Crime and
Punishment, that changed our world.
Tuesday's Harriman Arts Program recital at the Folly Theater was more of an event than usual because it included a rare local performance of Stravinsky's two-piano version.
Emanuel Ax and Yefim Bronfman, on grand pianos fitted neatly together so the pianists faced each other, attacked the ferocious and shimmering score with the fury of two musical titans.
It was an impressive, virtuosic performance that capitalized on their different musical personalities — Ax the stormy poet, Bronfman the tiger — but that also showed a vision of the score's grandeur.
Rite capitalizes on clarity and color — infinite orchestral color in its full version — and the challenge of pianists is to eke some of this color out of an instrument that makes its sound with hammers striking strings.
In the soft passages they were able to do this, especially Ax, who gave the "woodwind" filigree a feathery touch. Bronfman was stronger in the steely melodic passages, which he had plenty of since he was playing the "primo," or top, part. (On the first half of the program, Ax shared "primo" duties.)
Still, the performance could have used less rigidity of pulse and more attention to melodic emphasis. Often subsidiary themes burst out more prominently than the main themes; at times you couldn't hear the main themes at all.
And the duo's tendency to overpedal the big noisy passages often obscured the crystalline clarity of Stravinsky's writing. One of the virtues of this two-piano arrangement is that it allows you to hear inner voices that sometimes get lost in a big orchestra (especially with a so-so conductor).
But with the thunderous parts sometimes played for decibel effect, this Rite was robbed of the more subtle messages that can come through even in the most raucous passages.
Perhaps the intention was to make it sound like an orchestra, and that is one valid approach. (Ax had commented that the pair would do their best "to imitate 105 players.") But a bit more clarity would have been welcome.
The program had begun with a finely wrought performance of Schumann's Six Pieces in Canonic Form, played for tender poetry and poise. Ax was especially at home here; both played with consummate taste.
Debussy's En blanc et noir traded more on Bronfman's assertive touch, mitigated with Ax's softly spun-out melodic lines. Ravel's La valse was graceful at the outset but grew relentless toward the end.
The encore was the slow movement from Brahms's Sonata, actually the composer's two-piano version of his Piano Quintet — quite a coincidence, considering it was the same piece the Emerson Quartet and Menahem Pressler had used as an encore two weeks ago on the same stage.
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