Evgeny Kissin and James Levine (piano)
Wednesday 27 April
2005
Symphony Hall,
Boston
Schubert:
Fantasy in F minor,
D. 940
Allegro in A minor, D. 947
("Lebenssturme")
Sonata in C major, D. 812
("Grand Duo")
When two celebrated pianists decide to share the stage with each
other, they perform a mitzvah for music: For one evening, they revive a
neglected repertory. Two or three generations ago, several two-piano teams enjoyed
full-time employment. With the exception of Katia and Marielle Labèque, it's now
difficult to think of any comparably successful keyboard duos.
Evgeny Kissin and James Levine comprised one of several pairs of big-name
piano soloists to make the rounds of American concert halls this season. But the
other duos performed brilliant two-piano works by Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff,
Schumann and Ravel that were designed to please the public in large concert
halls and that usually show up when two pianists perform together today. Kissin
and Levine chose works by Schubert for one-piano-four-hands — a
repertory that is infinitely richer and almost never performed.
One reason for the infrequent appearance of this music in the concert hall is that it was rarely intended for public performance. The playing of piano duets was a domestic ritual during the 19th century, when "a piano in the parlor" was a mark of middle-class status and when families frequently entertained themselves and visitors at the instrument. Piano duets were therefore marketable commodities, and almost every major European composer of the century worked in the genre — including Beethoven, Weber, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Dvorák and Grieg. Schubert not only wrote more of these works — over 70 — than anyone else, he was also the only one who used the piano-four-hands medium to produce genuinely great music. The reason is relatively simple: Schubert may not have been as neglected as legend would have us believe, but he surely had fewer opportunities to hear his music performed in concert halls than most of history's other important composers. He and his circle comprised the only performers and listeners upon whom he could reliably depend.
The names Kissin and Levine assured a sold-out hall for three works which
were probably new to most of the audience, but which figure among the greatest
music ever written for the keyboard.
Or, in the case of this particular concert, for two keyboards. Schubert did write these pieces for two people sitting at one instrument, but the only audible difference between one and two pianos in this music is that two instruments are slightly louder than one. The advantage when pianists share a keyboard is unity of ensemble — the players can see each other's hands. But using two keyboards eliminates the potential hazards of over-hand crossings — piano duos performing at one keyboard, having rehearsed in shirtsleeves, have been known to become entangled in each other's suits. In any case, the seating arrangement chosen on this occasion didn't matter; what did is that Levine's and Kissin's playing never failed to display remarkable virtuosity, unity and imagination.
The first half of the program consisted of two intense, dark-hued works that date from the last year of Schubert's life. The F minor Fantasy, D. 940, is an extended work in four dissimilar sections that seems to meditate on death. This powerful and disturbing performance displayed subtlety and a superb sense of structure. Kissin's rendition of the work's plaintive opening theme suggested the rhythm and intonation of keening speech. His tempo was fearlessly slow, even dangerously so — but Levine, with unshakably steady octaves in the bass, maintained the regularity of the pulse and thus preserved the music's processional character. The last of several extraordinary moments occurred in the work's closing measures. The return of the opening theme leads into a massive double fugue which, just as it comes to a climax, unexpectedly breaks off. Kissin and Levine gauged this dramatic silence with perfection, making the final reiteration of the haunting theme in the work's final cadence cataclysmic in effect.
The pianists maintained this kind of coordination throughout the evening. They negotiated the fierce octaves and daunting cross-rhythms of the Beethoven-like A minor Rondo ("Lebenssturme") with ease. In the unfolding of the haunting second theme, the delicacy of Levine's figurations high in the treble and Kissin's incisiveness in the middle register and low octaves captured the diaphanous textures perfectly.
Then, for the entire second half of their program, they played the Sonata in
C, D. 812 ("Grand Duo") with muscularity, wit, drama and an explosive range
of dynamics that never degenerated into noise. Two encores followed: bravura
renditions of the composer's second Marche caractéristique, D. 886, and
his Marche militaire, D. 733.
