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Hong Kong
Hong Kong Cultural Center
11/08/2007 -
Alberto Ginastera: Danzas Argentinas, Op. 2
Domenico Scarlatti: Piano Sonatas in D Major, L. 208 (K. 397) & in A Major, L. 208 (K. 238)
Franz Schubert: Piano Sonata in A Major, D. 664 – Impromptus Op. 142, No. 1 & No. 2
Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 31 in A Flat Major, Op. 110
Maria Joao Pires (piano)
Always a distinctive voice in the music scene since her debut in the 1970s, the Portuguese pianist Maria Joao Pires had assumed a reputation in the West with a series of landmark Mozart recordings that suggested to amateurs and connoisseurs alike that gracefulness and elegance were two adjectives typical of her performance style. In the recent two decades, specifically, she is known to many in the East as much as afar through her many recordings on the yellow Deutsche Grammophon label, being referred as one of today's most prominent interpreters in the music of Chopin, Schubert and Mozart. For those who had the luxury to attend her performance 25 years ago in an unforgettable recital at the Sir Robert Ho Tung Library in Macau, her recent return to Macau last week in a concerto programme of Mozart and Beethoven along with last evening's recital must appeared a "dream come true" to many. Literally, our ears are (once again) blessed with heavenly music under her fingers at the Hong Kong Cultural Center in Tsim Sha Tsui. In recitals as much as in recordings, Miss Pires has recently portrayed that she has a more assertive character as well. Her crystalline touch, rhythmic vitality and clear articulation only serve to enhance an innate musicianship, a true artist by virtue. For approximately 2hrs, such qualities transcended from one piece to the next in Miss Pires's recital, as part of the Encore Series hosted by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department. Here, she performed a list of repertoire from composers dear to her heart: Ginastera, Scarlatti, Schubert and Beethoven.
Miss Pires delivered the concert tonight in two equal "breathes;" all pieces in the two halves were specifically requested by the artist herself to be played consecutively, and in return the audience was asked not to applaud in between. This created an effect of continuity and spontaneity, with the audience at large remaining so fine-tuned and focused to what Miss Pires had to deliver musically in her musical train of thought. The audience behaved quite well this evening - coughs were waited till the last note of each piece before they were exploded! Miss Pires seemed to present herself as a Classicist at heart, and in most of the music she performs these days, she inspires her listeners - young and old by her fine balance between courtship elegance and deep emotional drama. Her performance of the Ginastera Danzas Argentinas, for instance, was exotic in flavor, never raw in sound, while its dance movements had an undercurrent pulse of propulsion, fiery tension characteristics as reminiscent to some of the native Argentinean folk-tunes. Even the nationalistic second movement had a touch of homesickness, in which Miss Pires interpreted with close affinity, a sentiment which radiated from her approach on the music so intimately where one forgets the true origins of Argentinean, Spanish or Portuguese. Here, the music spoke in a common tongue; the audience was captivated by Miss Pires's without a second of signal loss.
Two Sonatas in the key of "D Major" and "A Major" followed thereafter. The Scarlatti Sonatas (L. 208 & L. 238) were her real strong suits, however. Miss Pires endowed the Sonata with a sense of royalty and transcendence, and maintained its elegiac atmosphere well between the two thematically related Sonatas. In each, she brightened the coloration of each trill, ever so slightly with modifications, but kept a firm, noble grasp on the music's internal harmonies. Then, Miss Pires came with her revelation of the evening in Schubert's D. 664 Piano Sonata. It was poetic, unusually tragic in nature, but she presented the major themes of the 1st and 3rd movements provocatively clear-textured and tactile. The crisp high-register on the Steinway piano Ms. Pires articulated seemed to be much better suited for Classicism than to the fiery elements of turn-of-the-century Argentinean music. Ms. Pires outlined the musical textures layer-by-layer by using the pedals effectively, never with an overuse. Regardless of the minimal slips in the occasional scale-runs, her performance was so engaging, communicative and lively that in the end it seemed more sensible to examine one's own expectations than Ms. Pires's interpretive solutions. Her approach certainly faired no less than what would have been in Schubert's own mind.
The second half of the concert began with a thoughtful and wonderfully variegated reading of Schubert's first two Imprompti (Op. 142) and ended with the evening's climax, in a successfully "tragic" reading of Beethoven's Sonata in A flat, Op. 110. Here Miss Pires played with an energy in the Imprompti that radiated from the inner, and the impulse intensified as the music reached its closing pages. In these two shorter works, the top line flowed smoothly and distinctly over the accompanimental figuration. Ms. Pires takes an uncommonly slower tempo in the second of the two Imprompti, but it was not so slow as to leave a listener impatient, rather, it created such tranquility that can smoothened even the crying heart. The melodies in Schubert's works take on a life of their own when they are played with an almost vocal quality, and Ms. Pires delivered them almost as a poet's gliding paintbrush on the canvass. In doing so, she did not neglect the storminess and introspection of the following Beethoven Sonata. Despite the fact that Ms. Pires appeared less physically-well than her usual appearances, the Beethoven Sonata did sound quite heavy and a bit overwhelmed for Pires. A great gush of emotions flushed from start till end, intermixed with what may have been Miss Pires's own experience, all such qualities equally make Beethoven the standard-bearer of a highly personalized late-Classicism that gave birth to early 19th-century Romanticism.
Portuguese pianist Maria Joao Pires is a poet among today's piano virtuosi. Miss Pires now lives in a country retreat far from the bustle of the major musical centres, bringing the resulting repose to her rare concert appearances. Recalling what Miss Pires once said on her choice of repertory: on contemporary music: "The aspect of modern music that puts me off it is hard to describe. It's missing something, unbalanced, lacking balance between the human soul on the one hand and the endless, the universe on the other hand. That's why I don't really relate to modern music, although there are certainly some good pieces." Late-Beethoven may not have been the most suitable repertoire for her either, but as a consummate Mozart pianist, followers of Miss Pires's performances and pianophiles at large could only salivate for her next performance when she could perform a Mozart Sonata or two, as one could hardly find a truly refined pianist for Mozart nowadays. A Chopin's Nocturne wouldn't have been bad too, afterall. Maria Joao Pires likewise appeared to oppose to stardom, finding applauses after concerts to be rather an embarrassing contour; on this, she once said: "Music isn't just the creation of a human being. There's something else there. A composer has powers within him which we cannot explain. But he [and she] too has them from somewhere from the whole world, from the universe. I as an artist am simply a channel passing on the music." It seemed quite obvious to the trained concert-goer that this artist much prefers the intimate atmosphere of the recording studio than to the hubbub of the concert hall.
With an encore from the Romantic repertory, an evening of truly heavenly music came to a close! Maria Joao Pires certainly loves spontaneity and once dubs herself less of a pianist than a "program changer." Reviewers are stunned by her musical awareness of fine details and the inner logic of her readings, which are pure poetry in performance. However, if one should have a final request to the music genie, it would be: do come back again to us soon, Miss Pires!
Patrick P.L. Lam
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