To begin with, Zimerman isn’t your typical concert pianist superstar. He travels with his own piano, which he regulates and voices specially for each hall where he performs. More important, he strives to keep the concert experience alive for himself and his listeners by interjecting the unexpected.
Mixing art and politics is nothing new. I remember how in 1990, when the Berlin Wall came down, Leonard Bernstein took liberties with the text of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, inserting the word Freiheit (freedom) for Schiller’s Freude (joy). OK, I could get into that. More commonly, a “serious” composer will instinctively deflate the pompous, even in his own music, by injecting humor in the most grave situation. Case in point: Bach’s C-minor Partita, despite some jazzy syncopations, can come off sounding a little dour. The opening Sinfonia is a long way from its Rondeaux and Capriccio, two frankly jocular pieces that define the term to lighten up.
Wishing to acknowledge the change in administration since he was last here, Zimerman turned to the audience and asked, point blank, what the purpose of this music might be. He then proposed that we celebrate the “yes we can” spirit of the current administration with a slight alteration of Bach’s text. I shuddered, anticipating an outcry from the purists, but there were only sighs of approval and anticipation.
Zimerman fully realized the rollicking joy and the more serious, even melancholy cast of its earlier movements. He furthermore transformed a somber mood into a zany one before we know what hit us.
He did not need to alter one note of Bach’s text to do this. To go back to the solemn opening of the piece, repeating its ponderous dotted rhythms in order to insert an affirmative C-major cadence — his correlate for “yes we can” was needlessly revisionist, and frankly, a little silly. While I have nothing against C major (see below), if there’s one place it doesn’t belong, it’s in this movement.
Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 111 is probably the most famous journey from C minor to C major this side of the Fifth Symphony. Zimerman’s reading of it was an odd combination of breathtaking virtuosity, wonderfully calculated sonorities, and unconvincing shifts of tempo. In the first movement, Beethoven does indicate wide tempo shifts as the music vacillates between manic activity and reflection. Zimerman was more than up to the daunting technical challenges posed by the work. The fugal passages of the first movement positively blazed under his fingers, never allowed to completely coalesce with the traditional sonata form, which may have been Beethoven’s intention. Fugue and sonata form are at cross-purposes here, and the resolution of the tragic drama of the first movement (to C major!) is clearly provisional.
The final variations conclude the Sonata on a note of blissful contemplation that’s beyond the reach of words. It’s also the point that separates “might have been” experiences from the truly transcendent. Those who ascended on Friday night, and I’m sure there were many, need no convincing. Zimerman played the final trills (not to mention the famous triple trills, which held the audience spellbound in a way I haven’t observed since the Grateful Dead and their holy hang-ups) with more than control: They seemed to take on a life independent of what he was doing. As for the rest, I’ll only remember how beautifully he played the opening theme, and look forward to the next time I can hear him play this divine work.
A Convincing, Relative Unknown
After intermission, the scheduled work was Brahms’ Op. 119, his last for piano. At first I was disappointed that Zimerman announced he had another B up his sleeve. It didn’t take me long to get over it. Grazyana Bacewicz is a Polish composer who composed her most important works during the soul-crushing Soviet era. Having been born around the time it was written, Zimerman cares passionately about this music and made every note of Bacewicz’ Second Sonata sound vital and alive. Like Shostakovich and many others, her music reflects the ability of composers to speak the truth in spite of political oppression, or perhaps because of it.Although I heard the influence of tonal postwar composers, and noted that the power and virtuosity that it takes to play Prokofiev and Bartók are also needed to play this music, I wasn’t prepared to hear another voice that couldn’t be mistaken for any of these, one that convinced and moved me. In particular, the bluesy slow movement captured a sense of timelessness, albeit with completely different means, similar to what we had heard moments before in the Arietta of the Beethoven, Op. 111.
Bacewicz’ work floats a simple melody over harmonies that were anything but vague. Yet, unlike Beethoven, who induces ecstasy by the simple alternation of tonic and dominant, her harmonies had a mysterious fascination that eludes analysis, yet made me want to understand their secret. By the end I felt that the bait and switch was completely justified and that more pianists should use it to play us unknown works in which they strongly believe.
Also played was Karol Szymanowski, another Polish composer who, though better known, is seldom heard here. His Variations on a Polish Theme show him as an immensely talented youth, coming into the 20th century with a command of pianistic textures equal, in its own way, to the idioms of Scriabin and Ravel. This music exerted a powerful influence on the pianists of his generation, and Zimerman showed that it still has something to say to ours.