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From Bach to Debussy  - Piano Recital by George Hadjinikos: Horto / Pelion, Greece, 17.8.2008 (BM)

George Hadjinikos

Most people wouldn’t tend to expect much from a concert in Horto, a sleepy seaside village on the Greek peninsula of Pelion, especially when tickets are a mere 5 euros, and presumably quite a few members of the audience didn’t realize what they were being treated to on this balmy summer evening: one of the rare recitals still given by distinguished Greek pianist George Hadjinikos.

Having devoted much of his life to music education (mainly in the UK, but his summer master classes in his native Horto have also become a tradition), it is no wonder that this evening, too, was conceived as a lesson, entitled “A Living Journey Through the History of Music from Bach to Debussy” and including brief introductions to the pieces he was about to play. And he embarked on this journey with an enduring Furtwängler quotation: “The issue today is no longer what makes for good or bad music, but rather music per se, what we mean when we use the term music.” (Es geht heute nicht mehr um gute oder schlechte Musik, sondern um Musik schlechthin.)

Choosing Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in C major (from the 2^nd book of the Well-Tempered Clavier) as a point of departure – and remarking in passing that the Fugue was of more academic than humanistic value, he moved on to the ones in F sharp major and F sharp minor in the 1^st book, observing that the former was a celebration of nature - his translucent playing, serving as a celebration of the fugue as an art form, so much more than just recurrently bringing out the theme - and the latter a reflection on the plight of mankind – or words to that effect. At 85, Hadjinikos’ voice is somewhat reduced, which made it difficult to catch everything he was saying, but it soon became evident that this was not all that important: he was saying everything he needed to when he sat down to play.

Next, after reminding us of how “Papa” Haydn succeeded in infusing seemingly simple forms with so much ingenuity that “nothing new came after him”, and referring to Mozart’s genius and how he changed the world of melody, he chose several movements from two of their lesser-performed sonatas – the Allegro from Haydn’s Sonata in E flat major HobXVI: 28 and the Adagio and Menuet I & II from Mozart’s K282 in the same key. Particularly the Haydn was performed with such affection for every single note that I couldn’t help but be reminded of Richter’s fondness for this composer’s works, so often underrated and deemed appropriate study fare for ‘intermediate’ students only.

I caught very little of the introduction to the moody and pained Largo e Mesto (followed by the Menuet & Trio) of Beethoven’s Sonata no. 7 in D major, but again, this was irrelevant, since it was all there in the music. The second movement of this sonata has been described as Beethoven’s first sojourn into the tragedy of existence, and Hadjinikos conveyed to us not only every subtle shade of the composer’s melancholy mindset, but also the beauty of the music born from it. There was no ‘prologue’ to the Brahms Rhapsody in G minor which came next – actually, I had felt a little disappointed when I saw it on the program, wasn’t this the kind of piece that led people to misunderstand Brahms’ music as ‘heavy’? But clearly this was because I had never heard the Rhapsody played quite like this before, without a trace of the Sturm & Drang style most pianists bring to it, completely devoid of all haste and more intense than ever – I wish there were a recording of this.

Much the same is true of the momentous interpretation of one of César Franck’s last compositions, the epic Prelude, Aria and Finale, which followed the interval. Before he set out on this separate voyage within the evening’s journey, and following an anecdote about how popular Franck’s music was in pre-war Greece – in his youth, the poet Angelos Sikelianos had once asked him to play Franck for him, saying that this was the only music he listened to  - Hadjinikos mentioned that to him, the Aria was essentially a prayer…and nothing could have been more fitting. His performance was perhaps less technically disciplined than lyrically delicate, but most important was his sensitive touch – exactly what is required to rekindle listeners’ appreciation of this masterpiece. It was not difficult to deduce from Hadjinikos’s next introductory lines that he is particularly partial to Debussy and the completely new approach he devised to harmony and the flow of music, as well as his ability to convey the feeling of eros in the pure sense, which he chose to demonstrate with Preludes no. 1, 8 and 10, while closing with ‘The Joyous Island’ - and Grieg’s Lullaby as an encore, in view of the late hour, as he remarked half jokingly (and indeed it was almost midnight).

Throughout the evening, it was as if he were playing to each member of the audience personally; intent on conveying his message of humanism, he focuses on the significance of music for humanity, for each and every individual listening to him, and expresses what cannot be put in words. I left the recital longing to get home and play some of these pieces myself, and wondering whether this feeling of discovery was anything similar to what it must have been like for Hadjinikos when he happened on those lost Skalkottas* manuscripts in a second-hand bookshop in Berlin.

Bettina Mara

*George Hadjinikos is an authority on Nikos Skalkottas, and the author of a recent book about this 20^th century Greek composer (unfortunately available in Greek only to date). The complete opposite of an academic treatise, the footnotes are almost more engrossing than the main text. Hadjinikos chose not to play Skalkottas at this recital, attesting to the fact that, fortunately for his audiences, self-projection is not an issue for him. Read more about this artist at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hadjinikos


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