The London Piano Festival 2022 finished on a high this afternoon with a two-part show, the first part being a lecture-recital by the wonderful orator/pianist Paul Roberts, and the second a solo recital of Liszt’s works by Festival co-founder Charles Owen.
Paul Roberts strode onto the stage alongside actors Florence Roberts and Oliver Bennett, dressed smartly and ready to deliver a lecture with his notes and book under his arms, but barely five minutes into his speech he realized he had messed up the order of his script.
It was only then that he revealed his true powers. Unfazed by this mishap which many an inexperienced speaker would have been unable to recover from, the veteran lecturer set his notes aside and delivered his lecture anyways. Unless this was a theatrical guise of his–flanked by two professional actors, I wouldn’t be surprised–it was a truly impressive feat.
In a bold and enunciating manner, Paul revealed to his audience how Liszt in his time did the controversial thing of pulling music closer to words, in a time when some granted music the elevated status of being absolute and pure.
Using Liszt’s Petrarch sonnets as an example, Paul argued that the pianist must identify with the character of the poem–in fact, becoming the first-person narrator of the story–in order to get to the heart of Liszt’s music.
Paul spoke with such authority and conviction that when he said “let us now turn to…” I was suddenly reminded of a priest giving mass, even though he was referring to the sonnets.
To fully immerse us in the manner in which Liszt would have performed the Petrarch sonnets, Paul even described to us the setting of a 19th-century opera theatre before Oliver took the stage and recited the first of the three Petrarchan sonnets which Liszt set to music.
Oliver’s performance was captivating; there was passion, but also irony in the silence right before the last couplet of the sonnet. Paul followed immediately with passionate urgency Liszt’s interpretation of the sonnet.
When Paul finished and Oliver stood up to recite Sonnet 104, it was as if he was a different person. The anguish, desperation and frustration of the lover was palpable, and the vehemence of Oliver’s voice expressed the almost unbearable conflict within the poetic persona. One can only imagine what it would have been like in Italian, with all its rhythms and rhymes. His recitation made me breathless.
The effect of pairing a reading with the performance of the sonnet made me realize that, coming from the perspective of the poetry, delving deep into the almost ineffable emotions that Petrarch, through words, sought to articulate, Paul’s playing did in fact sound like someone singing or reading poetry fervently, and the music took on a different quality altogether.
The marriage of poetry and music, the way they not only complimented but raised the appreciation of one another was most apparent in Sonnet 123. Florence and Oliver shared the sonnet together, in which the beloved is elevated to a divine status, and with a repetition of the final couplet, achieved great dramatic effect. Paul’s playing was equally inspired, and I was really touched by the fragile beauty that he achieved through this inspiration, an inspiration which came from words as much as sound.
Charles took over the second part with a recital of Liszt’s more spiritual music, a theme which began with the last of the three Petrarch sonnets and sees Liszt reach even great profundity and introspection, especially with the last piece, Variations on a theme by Bach: “Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen“. Charles dove straight into the Deux Légendes, which are rather “impressionist” in the way they paint the picture of St. Francis of Assisi preaching to birds and walking on water. In the first Legendes, in conjunction with picture painted, Charles was light as a feather. It was not just his sound; his body movement reflected the sound he produced, and it seemed as if he was lightly hovering over the music. The image of someone lightly dipping his fingers in a serene pool of water sparkling in the sunlight came to my mind.
Charles created great excitement in his performance of the second Légende, achieved not by releasing himself, but actually by holding himself back, letting the tremolos bubble within, rising and falling with the waves of hemisemiquavers in the left hand. Only until it seemed to much to contain this feverish excitement did he let loose in the climax, and we perceive St Francis soaring among the waves in all his glory.
Two movements from the third Années de pèlerinage followed, both relating to the Villa d’Este in Tivoli, near Rome: “Aux Cyprès de la Villa d’Este” and “Les Jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este”. The clarity of the semiquavers in the latter showed water not to be a backdrop of the piece, but rather the centre of it all, unlike the waves of the second Légende, and the perfection with which Charles executed them made the piece all the more satisfying to listen to.
The Bach variations is so unlike what we commonly know the Lisztian style to be that one could easily mistake Busoni for the composer of this wonderful piece. It was composed during a period of intense grief for Liszt, when his eldest daughter Blandine died in 1862, and it was to Bach that he turned in this tragic time of his life. For this masterpiece, Liszt chose the theme of someone else, the unlikely bass line of the first movement of Bach’s cantata “Weeping, Wailing, Mourning, Trembling”. I am reminded of Bach who, dealing with grief after the death of his first wife, chose the chaconne form (which is even stricter in form than the variations form) as a form of expression (this theory may be contested, but it’s a good story nonetheless). Perhaps in moments of grief, simplicity is the greatest consolation.
There may be simplicity in the concept, but there is nothing simple about Liszt’s Bach Variations. It is intense, not only technically but also emotionally, requiring great strength from the pianist, and Charles really gave it his all, showing us the great struggle Liszt went through, as well as the conflict between reverence and fear of an omnipotent God which lay at the heart of his psyche. It was a mighty performance, and a great way to conclude the 2022 London Piano Festival.
Literally Left-handed 
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