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Less Blithe Spirit Than Lithe Fingers New York
Theresa L. Kaufmann Concert Hall, 92nd Street Y
03/14/2009 -
Robert Schumann: Nachtstücke, Opus 23 – Carnaval, Opus 9
Claude Debussy: Préludes, Book 1
Shai Wosner (Piano)
Shai Wosner (© Marco Borggreve)
The young Israeli pianist Shai Wosner had a far more exciting published program than the one he played last night—including Shiraz, by the late Canadian composer Claude Vivier, and Debussy’s Estampes—but this more conventional concert did show Mr. Wosmar’s potential as one of the finer pianists of our day.
The two Schumann and one Debussy exhibited an artist whose technical prowess is above reproach. Even when his fingers couldn’t quite keep up with his thoughts, as in Debussy’s Voiles, they were split-second excusable lapses. For the most part, Mr. Wosner had fleet fingerwork, excellent musicianship and he worked awfully hard for his plaudits. Still, perhaps we felt that work too much, but this was piano-playing not so much poetic but worthy of disinterested respect.
One thinks of the more static Debussy preludes, Delphic Dancers and Sounds and Perfumes Swell in the Evening Air. Mr. Wosner played with dignity and stolid beauty. Yet these are not etchings, they have an organic ebb and flow. Debussy was certainly aware that every stationary object has its own internal movement, its own atomic energy. Mr. Wosner’s notes were pretty, but they lacked the organic nuance, the shadows behind the brightest notes.
The pianist certainly didn’t take the easy way out. Even in the sonorous What the West Wind Told Me, and The Engulfed Cathedral, he used the pedal sparingly, allowing his digits to tie the notes together. Again, this offered a kind of classical austerity to what must be a curious blurred impression.
The opening Schumann Night Pieces were also agreeable and respectable, but were nowhere near Schumann’s own image of the works as “visions of funeral precessions, caskets and frightened miserable people.” The first did have that funereal tread under Mr. Wosner’s hands, but the others seemed more like lugubrious studies than eerie nocturnes.
After the intermission, Mr. Wosner played Carnaval with far more personal power, though perhaps not enough. No pianist who can master the notes could ever be rebuked for taking too many liberties. Mr. Wosner took none at all. His Chiarina was not charmless but the charm came in bits. The Coquette was almost spontaneous, the Eusebius was stolid—though his Chopin section was pure magic, as was the grandiose finale, where every note was clear, where the bass theme came up like thunder for a torrential ending.
The two encores were the second and third Schubert Moments musicaux, played with the same dexterity and same objectivity. For by the end of the program, Mr. Wosner had shown a mastery of the music, with mind and hands. For the future, with the flesh so strong, the spirit may be more than willing.
Harry Rolnick
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