Miller Theatre at Columbia University
Thursday, February 19, 2004, 8:00 P. M.
Piano Revolution Series
Berio and
Scelsi
Blair McMillen, piano
Blair McMillen presented an
exciting program of the piano music of two 20th century Italian
compositional giants. If giants seems too great a term to burden
these two composers with, then let us turn to the American Heritage
Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition, which lists the
word giant as that signifying a person of extraordinary power,
significance or importance. I then might draw argument from some for
listing Scelsi alongside Berio, but not after the persuasive
presentation by Mr. McMillen at the Miller Theatre. His playing held
a mirror not only to similarities of style and technique, but depth
of thought between the two composers, without neglecting the
differences that marked each with his own distinctive
characteristics. Both composers relished the timbral color of the
piano, as well as utilizing the entire compass of it’s range while
allowing silences to resonate on an equal footing with sustained
tones. Berio was more akin to an engineer in plotting out his
structures and works in a well thought out process. Scelsi was more
intuitive and allowed his music to emanate in an organically
inspirational manner. Yet both, in their piano works, shared traits
that could fool a listener who held that knowledge beforehand. Berio
can sound startlingly impulsive and Scesi as inevitable as the
approaching dawn. Such are the vagaries of stereotypical thinking on
the part of the “educated” listener.
Mr.
McMillen’s technique was outright formidable. Dazzling and
virtuosic; he is at turns, all highly charged density and in the
next instant, spiritually translucent and lucent, always with a
sensitivity that brings illumination to the knottiest music at his
fingertips. Scelsi’s Sonata No. 2, allowed Mr. McMillen to amply
display his pedaling, most notable in his exemplary use of the
sustain, and his complete command of repetition and silences,
allowing him to portray the verve and energy of he outer movements
in beautiful balance with the more contemplative inner movement.
The Six Encores of Luciano Berio were broken
up between the two segments of the program. Mr. McMillen programmed
the three dealing with the elements of fire, water and earth first
and brought the descriptively evocative nature of the works to the
fore. Feuerklavier was dexterously fleet and capricious;
Wasserklavier was translucent and rife with crystalline arpeggios;
Erdenklavier was suitably apt and coloristically textured with more
weightier tone and depth of feeling without being ponderous.
The remaining three encores in the second
half; Luftklavier (Air); Brin (Wisp) and Leaf, were characterized by
single notes and chords. The softly rendered repetitions and
arpeggiations that illuminated these three works were imbued with
hauntingly melodic atmospheres by Mr. McMillen, whose playing
brought resonance and delicacy to aid in the clarity already at the
core of these short pieces.
Another Berio
work, Sequenza IV, from his series of 16 works for virtuoso solo
instruments is not only a showcase of the composer’s talent but also
a showpiece for Mr. McMillens fantastic technique. The ease with
which he tossed off this work belied it’s inherent challenges. This
work has everything but the proverbial kitchen sink thrown in.
Requiring the pianist to sustain balance and shape with series’ of
disparate chords; to bring dramatic contrasts of nuance and dynamic;
to sparkle with arpeggios and single note runs; to contrast
consonance and dissonance; and to even strike the piano with dense
palm clusters. The rigor of Mr. McMillen’s attack and control was
absolutely first rate as was his mastery of the lightning shifts in
tempo and rhythm. Simply dazzling playing.
Giacinto Scelsi’s Un Adieu, his last work, composed in 1978
and revised shortly before his death, is a contemplative piece with
a gorgeously seductive melody riding the crest of the music below.
At times it’s microtonal dissonances served to enhance the soothing
effect of the melodic line and set up the sussurating triadic chords
that diffused into silence at the end. Mr. McMillen’s deft touch
heightened the nocturnal mood.
Berio’s
Petite Suite, whose five short movements pay homage to the 18th
century French keyboard tradition, also displayed the younger
composer exploring the styles of his older contemporaries, i.e.,
Ravel, Poulenc and Stravinsky. Neo-classical in mood and structure,
it offers surprises galore in it’s juxtaposition of separate keys
and it’s full use of the entire range of the piano. Mr. McMillen’s
right hand figurations kept pulling the left hand forward, and the
works dark-hued textures, lovely repetitions and counter melodies
sustained an effervescence in spite of it’s sometimes jarring
modernisms.
Mr. McMillen ended his concert
with Scelsi’s Five Incantations, a work dedicated to his friend, the
French painter and author Henri Michaux. This work challenges the
pianist and audience with seemingly aleatoric gestures throughout
and like Berio, explores as many of the sonic qualities of the
modern piano as possible. The first section allows the darkest
extremes of the left hand to dominate while the wildness of the
second movement is involved with chasms of sound sculpture. Scelsi
meant this work to pull the listener into the resonant possibilities
of the piano, what he termed it’s “inner life” or third dimension”
and the third movement, entitled agitato does just that. It a
tempestuous piece of writing and Mr. McMillen brought it off with
flair. The fourth movement’s gong like single note repetitions,
allows open sustain pedaling throughout, producing an ominous ending
that beautifully set up the cat chasing it’s own tail arpeggiations
and multiple block chords to charge across the stage and out into
the audience. It seemed that every note on the piano’s keyboard was
struck too many times to count. In this piece and throughout the
evening, Mr. McMillen proved a persuasive advocate of these
composer’s piano music, alternating a gentle touch, full of light
and legato, and never losing sight of the core of the music, no
matter how knotty or agitated it became. Mr. McMillen is a wonderful
discovery for me and brilliant is too light a term to describe his
myriad attributes.
John Hammel, Mozart To Motorhead Show, WNTI, 91.9
F.M. www.wnti.org.
© Copyright 2004, WNTI
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