2024-09-22 19:54:47
The tickets for Tuesday’s concert of the Prague Dvořák festival, which were sold out long in advance, showed that the name of Argentine pianist Martha Argerich is still a big attraction for the audience. The 83-year-old star of classical music no longer plays solo recitals, he performs in chamber groups or on two pianos. That was the case this time as well.
In the Dvořák Hall of the Rudolfinum, she presented herself alongside her thirty-three-year-old colleague Sophie Pacini. They left the audience in high spirits thanks to sparkling performances of optimistic compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and spectacular works by Franz Liszt.
“We can’t be without Mozart,” explained Sophie Pacini as they chose the repertoire. They started the evening with Mozart’s Sonata for two pianos in D major, which in terms of size and difficulty is more like the parameters of a piano concerto. It’s a pity that the acoustics of the hall do not allow you to clearly enjoy all the fast notes – this particular composition would deserve an environment in which the sixteenth notes, played gently and with ease, would shine crystal clear.
However, we witnessed an equal dialogue between the two female protagonists. The German-born daughter of an Italian father, Sophie Pacini is a phenomenal performer and shares with Martha Argerich a spontaneity and incredible ease in tackling difficult passages. Communication between them is done without significant gestures and nods. Here and there they exchange a quick glance or a fleeting smile across the two long pianos.
At the same time, playing two pianos represents a specific category of chamber music. Two identical instruments, each capable of representing an orchestra, that’s a lot of notes, the texture of which has to be thought through so as not to overwhelm the audience with sound. As for interplay, it’s about hundredths of a second, the speed, direction and weight with which the key is pressed.
Playing two pianos in unison is the high school of self-denial. The performer must adapt the stroke to another person’s hand, which he cannot even see, he must feel the phrases in unison: it takes great discipline to let the beautiful melody of one give priority to the voice of the other. But when it succeeds and there is a connection that can only be called breathing together, the result is great satisfaction and pleasure for both players and listeners.
The second half of Tuesday evening began with a solo by a younger artist. After the “warm-up” soft Consolation by Franz Liszt, she played the overture to the opera Tannhäuser by Richard Wagner, as arranged for the piano by his distant relative Liszt. The magnificent tones of German romanticism, requiring the entire spectrum of orchestral colors, were translated by the genius pianist Liszt in a manner faithful to the original, but at the same time supremely “piano”.
He exhausted the entire catalog of the most difficult elements of technique – big jumps, octave passages, trills, tremolos and so on. The author thereby served the music, but also saturated the viewer with even circus elements. Sophie Pacini overcame this technical aspect in Prague with astonishing nonchalance, the flow of the music had a thrust and a captivating gradation. She got sound power from the piano without giving the impression of significant effort.
The final Reminiscences of Don Juan, i.e. Liszt’s paraphrase of motifs from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, were in a similar spirit, this time again for two pianos. Franz Liszt was not the only one to whom arias from this opera served as themes for variations – Mozart captivated the romantic generation with his singing, opera was considered the highest genre at the time. In this Liszt tribute, the characters of the Komtur come to life, then the title figure in the famous duet Là ci darem la mano, when he seduces Zerlina, and finally the audience is treated to a bravura stylization of the “champagne aria”.
If we say that Tannhäuser in Liszt’s treatment is difficult, then it is difficult to find adjectives for the difficulty of these Don Juanian reminiscences. Here Liszt broke free from the chain and created passages that were almost unplayable. Martha Argerich threw herself into the stormy waves of the score with vigor and confidence, headlong, but not headlong. Her technique is natural, the piano seems to be a part of her body and together they form a breathtaking image. Liszt’s music is not only for the ears, but also for the eyes, and while watching it, the pulse of the audience in the hall may have reached even higher values than those of the two magicians on the stage.
Applause followed, and despite the evident exhaustion of the pianist, they gave the audience two more four-hand encores. The first was again a transcription – processing of a chorale from a Bach cantata by the Hungarian composer of the 20th century György Kurtág, after which they said goodbye with the final movement from Mozart’s Sonata in D major. This year’s Dvořák Prague can claim another enriching evening.
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