The three distinguished PianoArts judges--Pavlina Dokovska, James Giles and Julian Martin--had been evaluating PianoArts' twelve semifinalists since Saturday. In twelve solo recitals and twelve duo recitals, they had heard a total of 86 pieces of music. Now it was their turn to play in front of an assembled crowd. Giles and Dokovska wowed the crowd at the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts on Tuesday night, showcasing their musical knowledge and talent for semifinalists, board members and everyone else who came.
Giles opened the program by talking about the "sense of childhood wonder" that he saw in Robert Schumann's Clavierstücke für die Jugend, or "Album for the Young", from which he played three selections. For me, the pieces were less wondering than they were introspective. Giles found a way to speak to the audience through the pauses in the pieces as well as through the notes, creating a wistful, reflective impression. This was only reinforced by the setup on stage: one artist, one piano, an island of black surrounded by empty space... and beyond that, an expanse of bright lighting and huge wooden panels. In that setting, the Schumann sounded kind of lonely.
Next on the program was Franz Liszt's Ballade in B Minor, No. 2. This was another ominous piece, with a slow, portentous roll often present in the left hand that crept up and down the lower third of the keyboard. The right hand, meanwhile, would plink and plunk out a somber sort of tune over the top of that slow roll; the cumulative effect was dark and somewhat menacing. Giles spoke about how Lizst's original inspiration for the piece was the love story of Hero and Leander from Greek myth (spoiler warning: both of 'em died tragically), and by the end of it, you could almost see the light going out in the tower where Hero lived (and Leander drowning in the Hellespont shortly thereafter).
Giles closed out his half of the concert with three of the Seven Virtuoso Etudes on Gershwin Songs by Earl Wild, an all-time great pianist whom Giles said he'd actually gotten to know years ago. "He was funny, outrageous, had an X-rated tongue," Giles said. He went on to tell the crowd how you could sort of hear the original Gershwin themes underneath all the embellishments, but Wild had "embroidered [them] in the most fanciful and gleaming way possible". I had to agree. There are so many jukes and jives and flourishes, so many extra notes on top of the main theme, it was both hilarious and awesome in its complexity.
After a short intermission, Dokovska took the stage (in a beautiful red dress, no less) and proceeded to wax rhapsodic about Claude Debussy, the only artist on her program. "He was a poet of the piano," Dokovska said. She quoted the great composer as remarking that "the era of airplanes requires new music. As there are no precedents, I must create anew". Writing amidst the Impressionistic period, Debussy was among a great number of artists who rebelled against the conventions of romanticism and realism alike. "They were looking not for the bright light, but for the mist and the fog," Dokovska explained. As Debussy said: "Music is a dream from which the veil has been lifted."
Dokovska played five selections from Debussy's Preludes ("Footsteps in the snow", "What the west wind has seen", "Veils", one from Images ("Reflections in the water") and L'isle joyeuse, "the island of joy". Taken as a whole, the selections started out in a sad, contemplative mood and became more joyous as Dokovska moved from piece to piece, a conscious choice on her part. The first few Preludes told the story of Debussy's separation from one of his loved ones (among other things), and it was a heartrending story. You could feel the snowflakes coming down, and see Debussy watching the footprints in the snow as they moved away from him.
Instead of interspersing her talk between the pieces, Dokovska spoke at length at the beginning of her half and then simply played everything else almost straight through. She told the audience so much about Debussy, and in such descriptive language, it was difficult not to hear his voice in the pieces, anguished and elated by turns. While the pieces did eventually turn from sadness to a kind of triumph, for me there was always something a little unsettling hiding in the notes, a kernel of doubt and uncertainty in Debussy's mind that kept the triumphs from being perfect. This wasn't unrestrained happiness or great romantic feeling, but a more complex glimpse into the composer's soul. "I will try to lift a little bit, as much as I can, the veil of Debussy's dream," said Dokovska, and for a spellbinding hour she did.
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