SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Bach and Rachmaninoff: Jeremy Denk and Adam Neiman, pianos, Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall, Benaroya Hall, Seattle  26.1.2008 (BJ)


Jeremy Denk is one of the finest young pianists now before the public, I have on several occasions enjoyed his brilliant and sensitive playing, and he has also shown himself, in the musings on his web site and blog, to be a highly intelligent thinker about music and other subjects. Adam Neiman, too, has impressed me before now in performances during the Seattle Chamber Music Society’s summer festivals. So the prospect of hearing Denk play Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations, and then team up with Neiman for the original two-piano version of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, was enticing. This, surely, was going to be one of the highlights of the winter season.

In the event, much of what we heard was indeed splendid. Denk’s Bach had all the rhythmic incisiveness and burnished tone I have enjoyed in his past work. The Rachmaninoff showcased both pianists in commanding vein, producing massive fortissimos that yet avoided harshness, and responding each to the other’s nuances of expression with evident sympathy and remarkable precision. And yet, in both works, it seemed to me that something was amiss.

This “Goldberg” reminded me of an experience I had more than40 years ago, listening to Pierre Boulez conduct Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in London: at a certain point in the first movement back then, I found myself wondering when we were going to get to that apocalyptic moment that opens the recapitulation–and realized that it had already happened, and that I hadn’t even noticed it, which must in a negative sense be accounted a considerable conductorial achievement. On this occasion, similarly, Denk might just as well not have played the sublime Adagio 25th variation for all the emotional effect it made. Nor is that my only complaint. Denk’s decisions regarding the inclusion or omission of repeats had a disastrously arbitrary effect in a work that largely depends for its impact on the artistry that the player brings to bear on the embellishment of repeats, but that was not much in evidence in this performance. And though I  ought perhaps not to be bothered by such considerations, the pianist indulged throughout in an extraordinary repertoire of nodding and jerking head-movements that I have never observed in his playing before, making it very hard to concentrate on the music.

The Symphonic Dances, whether played on two pianos or in the orchestral version that Rachmaninoff soon made of it, is one of the composer’s greatest works, and it made a strong impression under Neiman’s and Denk’s hands. But there was again a physical oddity, for they had chosen the strangest stage set-up I have ever seen in a two-piano performance. Instead of facing each other, with one piano behind the other, they sat side by side, with the two pianos angled at roughly 45 degrees toward the back of the platform. Maybe they felt they could secure better ensemble that way, and I had certainly no complaint in that regard. But the effect was incommunicative in the extreme, since both pianists were facing away from the audience, and many members of the audience in turn could see them only with difficulty, especially with a page-turner seated between Denk and the public. Before they play the piece again, I would urge them to think hard about this. They are both far too good musicians to saddle themselves with such circumstantial distractions.

Bernard Jacobson

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