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The Mystical Prophet Los Angeles
Walt Disney Concert Hall
01/31/2006 -
Schumann: Waldszenen, Op. 82
Schumann: Humoreske in B-flat, Op. 20
Schubert: Sonata in G, D. 894
Radu Lupu (piano)
Seeming to step out of a distant era, trailing clouds of eastern European mystery, Radu Lupu made a subtly powerful recital debut last week at Disney Hall in Los Angeles. As much as any other pianist before the audience today, Radu Lupu is one of a kind, an extraordinary anachronism, and a musical enigma. In Disney Hall, today’s ultimate sleek and stylish modern auditorium, he made a striking contrast. But in terms of both atmosphere and musicality, that contrast was startling, imposing, almost overwhelming.
Born in Romania in 1945 and trained in Moscow, this performer seemed to call for an ornate Russian concert hall, or a gilded onion dome cathedral, filled with the smoke of incense. Musically, his playing displayed quietness around the edges, a shadowy quality with deep underlying strength. His technique seemed the opposite of the bright, precisely articulated modernist style of, for example, Pierre Laurent Aimard or Esa Pekka Salonen. The stark precise clarity of Disney Hall seems to have been designed for a crystalline high modernist approach to music. But Radu Lupu’s presence absolutely filled the room, darkening the air with a sense of candlelight and transporting the audience to another time.
Appearing stoic and inscrutable in the grey and black of an orthodox monk, he silently walked on stage and immediately sat down to play. Although he has toured with some regularity over several decades, and appears with the pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim, his recitals are greeted as rare events. The house was almost full.
Schumann’s late Waldszenen, Op. 82, made a difficult beginning to the recital. The pianist seemed tired. There was some resistance in adjusting to Los Angeles. He had come a long way to Disney Hall. Plenty of coughing and an ill-timed cell phone ring also disturbed the opening piece. The music reflected a long quiet walk through the forest, although the path was rockier than it might have been. The performance was about the play of light and shadow, about the subtlety of transitions, moving from darkened paths into the openness of dappled meadows. The notes and phrasing were not finely chiseled, but a rarefied musical ambience did begin to present itself. While the playing was not 100% meticulous, and the coughing forced him to pause, he was not particularly fazed by the phone ringing. Overall, he began to assert an inexorable power over the audience. This force was not at all like the fierceness of Alicia De La Rocha or the imposing brilliance of Alfred Brendel. Radu Lupu seemed much more foreign, representing a kind of musical “other” that was immensely intriguing. The particular darkness and difficulty of the Waldszenen added to this effect.
Music that does not partake of traditional forms is often harder to enter. The mind does not know what to expect, instinctually. Both of the pieces in the first half of the program, Schumann’s Waldszenen and Humoreske, are examples of this type of informal composition. In music that takes the “sonata form”, we intuitively understand and are satisfied by the tension and release of waiting for what we subconsciously know is coming next. Although, there are, of course, infinite variations within the constraints of sonata form as well.
In the Humoreske, perhaps more familiar than the Waldszenen, the performance bloomed and came fully into its own. Not comic, but rather an intimate portrait of the composer’s emotions, this piece encompasses a variety of tone and mood. Radu Lupu’s stoic, mystical countenance allowed the music to reveal its depth, reflecting and rendering beauty from the human experience. There were softer edges, and a softer illumination than Sviatoslav Richter would create. The change of moods went from dark to light, from fire to storm to dance and then to reflection. Radu Lupu made the transitions so subtle that I found myself in another mood state without noticing that I had moved at all.
In the great Schubert Sonata in G, D. 894, he was forceful but relaxed, not supremely controlled but natural, at ease. The music simply flowed. Although his hands did occasionally fly up off the keyboard in flourishes, there was mostly no arm movement, and no body movement at all. At moments his fingers became hammers, snapping down on the keys, seeming to create more sound than the piano could stand. At other moments the music became almost turgid, slow to the point of stopping all together. There was an intimate quality that drew me in, warm, elusive, full of dark power, with a delicacy beyond even Mitsuko Uchida.
He was met with a slow and partial standing ovation. He stood and gave a formal bow and scowl, and left the stage. Then the shouts of “bravo!” grew, urging him not to stop playing. Returning, he actually seemed pleased to play in Disney Hall, and gave the Warum, from Schumann’s Fantasiestücke as an encore. The piece was haunting, uncontrollable, transcendent. This obscure demi-god of music made the light seem dimmer in Disney Hall, changing it, darkening it, rendering it more mysterious.
Thomas Aujero Small
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