Tchaikovsky - Debussy - Delibes - Fauré - Ravel - Stravinsky
David Lively, piano
Another lecture-recital, of sorts, again focused on Debussy, and the influences around him. David Lively is an American-born pianist, now naturalised French, who currently holds the position of Dean of Examinations at the Ecole normale de musique (the music school founded by Alfred Cortot at the turn of the 20th Century) in Paris. He has a moderately percussive style, and a slight tendency to over-pedal, so the results in this particular repertory were a little mixed. The programme in itself was quite interesting, Russian music to start and finish, both the concert and the opposing ends of Debussy's career, and various French contemporaries in between.
The Tchaikovsky, an extract from The Seasons seemed anodyne, but was disturbed by the unfortunate collapse of a member of the public - it was extremely warm last night - and the pianist was understandably somewhat unsettled by that interruption, and took a little while to get back into the flow, so that both the Tchaikovsky and the initial Debussy pieces suffered. However, by the middle of the Suite bergamasque his concentration had returned in full, and the pedalling was well-controlled here, appropriately for the neo-baroque style of the piece, with a particularly crisp "Passepied". The first part of the recital ended with a foray into evocations of Spain - two of Debussy's Preludes, and Ravel's "Alborada del gracioso", which got off to a slightly unsteady start, but quickly shaped up into the glittering virtuoso display it should be.
There were only two works in the second half, the second book of Images, and Stravinsky's Trois Mouvements de Petrouchka, his own adaptation of scenes from his ballet, written for and at the request of Artur Rubinstein. In the Debussy, there was not enough magic in the interpretation to distract me from the limitations of the Yamaha concert grand that was being used. The Yamaha has a crisper keyboard action than the usual Steinway, and presents certain advantages when playing very technical, note-heavy music like the Ravel and the Stravinsky, but it has a bright, metallic timbre that lacks bloom at either end of the keyboard, the sound hard and a little tinny, not at all what one wants to hear in Debussy. It was far less important in the Stravinsky, whose outer movements are magnificently cacophonous, and seem to require an extra pair of hands, at the least, and there was plenty of vigour in Lively's interpretation, but not quite enough precision. Still, even in a less than perfect reading, it's always a spectacular end to any evening.
[Next: 30 August, morning and evening]
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