When I saw the program, I knew I had to go. Back in Boston for a spell, with access to world class musicians again! Beethoven, Brahms, and Bach. The Beethoven and Brahms pieces are pieces I know and love and listen to often. The Bach is the Chaconne in D Minor, a majestic work for violin, which I know mostly from the often-performed classical guitar arrangement. Grimaud is performing a piano arrangement by Busoni, which I did not know existed!
I was last at Jordan Hall for John Williams, I think, perhaps in the 1990s. I attended with Michelle and our good friends Thomas and Lynn. I still remember Williams’s performance of Domeniconi’s Koyunbaba, in which Lynn decided Williams had grown a sixth finger during the performance, or else he would not have been able to do what he did…
It was not that long ago, that we could not see live music performed. I am grateful that we can again do so!
Jordan Hall a beautiful and comfortable hall with excellent acoustics.
Ms. Grimaud took the stage, and took a few bars to find her footing on the Beethoven. I listen to the Gould version quite often. Grimaud’s take is clean and professional, if somewhat dry in comparison. Her tempi are slower than Gould’s, but then, most everyone’s is. Gould’s insistence that the only reason to record something is to make it new and fresh leads him to interesting, idiosyncratic interpretations (and humming, lots of humming).
Ms. Grimaud’s Beethoven was crisp and enjoyable, if missing the occasional ecstatic bursts that Gould renders so well. Hearing the music live gave the pieces a freshness I have been missing from listening to recordings. Still, her tempo variations occasionally jarred me out of my listening. I heard what I thought were a few minor mistakes or simply a muddled sound – passages that did not seem quite right for pieces I know quite well. Nevertheless, it was riveting to listen and watch – it’s been some time since I went to a live classical music performance.
The first half concluded with the Brahms Three Intermezzi, Op. 117, another set of pieces I have long admired. Her Brahms was surer than her Beethoven to my ears.
After a brief intermission – what Jordan hall, nobody selling wine during intermission? – I have been away from concerts too long, and I missed having a glass on break.
Back at it after intermission, Grimaud played like she had dinner reservations. I mean this not in a negative way particularly, but she launched into Brahms’ Seven Fantasies, Op. 116 before her welcome applause had even stopped. I love these pieces – moody, introspective, lyrical, and Grimaud’s performance did them justice. But with just a micro-second of pause, she leapt from the Brahms into an explosive rendering of the Bach Chaconne.
The Chaconne is a majestic work, in the canon of both the violin and the guitar. Segovia transcribed the piece for the guitar in the 1930s, cementing the instrument’s place as a serious classical instrument. Famously, he had this to say about it:
Segovia had a story he would tell whenever he talked about the Chaconne. According to Segovia, the famous violinist Enesco gave the following advice to a student: “You must study the Chaconne all your life, but you must not play it in public until you are 50, because it is very, very deep.”
https://www.guitarist.com/the-chaconne/
Since we are talking Brahms here, I learned after the concert that Brahms himself wrote a transcription of the Chaconne for the piano for one hand – the left.(listen here) Here is what Brahms had to say about this piece:
The Chaconne is, in my opinion, one of the most wonderful and most incomprehensible pieces of music. Using the technique adapted to a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I could picture myself writing, or even conceiving, such a piece, I am certain that the extreme excitement and emotional tension would have driven me mad. If one has no supremely great violinist at hand, the most exquisite of joys is probably simply to let the Chaconne ring in one’s mind. But the piece certainly inspires one to occupy oneself with it somehow…. There is only one way in which I can secure undiluted joy from the piece, though on a small and only approximate scale, and that is when I play it with the left hand alone…. The same difficulty, the nature of the technique, the rendering of the arpeggios, everything conspires to make me feel like a violinist!
The Busoni arrangement is, on the other hand, majestic, titanic, explosive, and wonderful to listen to, providing a fundamentally different view of this piece, which in the original violin has a more quiet majesty. This was like listening to Listz or Tchaikowsky – brilliant cadenzas, thundering chords, and a general explosion of sound.
The applause for Grimaud’s Chaconne was thunderous, and she came back for two encores, which I did not recognize. Grimaud did not speak, ever, even to introduce her encores. I’m out of date on current concert practices but I was surprised.
Then I was out into the freezing, snowy night and into a Lyft for home, which made getting out of Boston quick and painless.
The program was a bit short, I thought. 90 minutes, with an intermission. Compare that to a recent Andras Schiff performance in Boston, clocking in at 150 minutes.
But all in all, a lovely evening with wonderful performances. Occasionally erratic or not entirely convincing, but lovely nonetheless. Here is a playlist of her recordings of the pieces in her program.
Other reviews, less positive than mine, from professional reviewers, (who of course have to have something to write about) here and here. There I learn that her two encores were Rachmaninov’s Etude-Tableau In C Major Op. 33 No. 2 and Valentin Silvestrov’s Bagatelle #2.
