Ronald Smith’s eightieth birthday fell on 3 January 2002; this
QEH concert was the culmination of a series of recitals he has been giving
throughout the year. It was, quite simply, astonishing. The playing –
and the musicianship – almost beggared belief. A friend remarked during
the interval that we would generally observe of most eighty-year-olds
that ‘so-and-so managed to get out a concert the other day’; that someone
close on 81 years of age should tackle a programme of such breathtaking
difficulty – Schubert’s ‘Wanderer’ Fantasia, Chopin’s Op. 12 Studies,
Beethoven’s Sonata No. 32, Op. 111, and three pieces by Alkan – and despatch
it with such technical ease and musical insight is extraordinary. Add
the fact that Smith’s vision is severely impaired – he had to feel for
the handrail every time he left the stage – and the extent of his achievement
becomes as clear as it is difficult to believe.
Smith comes on stage hesitantly, as if slightly shy,
doubtless because of his eyes; once he is seated at the piano, the manner
changes entirely. He sits back and low, leaning into the keyboard, his
arms outstretched and his large hands held low over the keys, with the
fingers appearing to drop out onto them as required. The result is a
maximal clarity of texture: you can hear every note he plays, with the
subsidiary lines and colours as readily perceptible as the dominant
ones.
Ronald Smith’s name is inextricably linked with that
of Charles-Valentin Alkan, whose greatness he perceived decades ahead
of everyone except the late Raymond Lewenthal, and whose music he has
done more to establish than anyone else, living or dead. So it was natural
that I first got to hear to Smith in Alkan, on LP and in recitals he
gave for The Alkan Society. In such repertoire, of course, there was
no one to judge him against, and so when I first heard him play something
else – the ‘Waldstein’ Sonata in a recital at Morley College around
1980 – it came as a salutary shock to discover that he was a great musician
as well as an astounding virtuoso: that profoundly insightful ‘Waldstein’
was the equal of any I had heard from pianists whose names go in larger
letters.
And so it proved here: a ‘Wanderer’ that was a template
for large-scale pacing and architectural control, Chopin studies that
blended Mozartian lucidity with Brahmsian power, and a Beethoven Op.
111 that was, in the first movement, blazingly exciting and compelling
in its magisterial energy and, in the second, a model of Olympian calm
– those murderously exposed trills were flawlessly even.
When Smith came back for his three Alkan pieces – ‘Le
tombeau bat aux champs’, Op. 50, No. 2, the weird and mesmeric ‘La chanson
de la folle au bord de la mer’, Op. 31, No. 8, and the fiendish octave
study that closes the 12 Études dans tous les tons majeurs,
Op. 35 – he introduced them from the platform, the understated whimsy
of his spoken manner contrasting pointedly with the monumental command
of his keyboard approach. His wife, he told us, had told him not to
play the Op. 35 but would we like to hear it anyway? Yes, bellowed a
near-full QEH, and so he did, with a precision and vigour that would
have been barely credible in someone sixty years his junior. After a
second curtain call he silenced the thunderous applause, asked whether
we would like Chopin or Alkan as an encore and then played a piece of
each composer. What he didn’t reveal was the reason his wife had advised
against the Alkan study: a severe chest pain that had already made itself
felt during the Chopin studies in the first half of the concert – and
which, with hindsight, made have signalled its presence then in a momentarily
loss of pace. Although in the interval he had been advised against continuing
the concert, he came back and dazzled us – the mark of the seasoned
trooper or a foolhardily brave gesture from someone who didn’t want
to disappoint his audience, or perhaps both.
I’m aware that this review has been a raft of superlatives,
but it was that kind of concert: I don’t recall a recital (and I’ve
seen a few) where the artist was given a standing ovation already after
the first half. Even without the guts that brought him back for the
second part of the programme, the evening was an opportunity to pay
homage to a remarkable musician and an outstanding man, and it will
resound in the memory even if I live to Smith’s young old age.
One small sour note: when is the administration of
the South Bank Centre going to throw out its exhausted old pianos and
get in some instruments with sounds that project? For all Smith’s virtuosity
and power, there was no bloom to the sound – and I know it’s the tool,
not the workman (the one in the Purcell Room is in worse condition yet).
Does no one complain? They must do.
If you missed this recital, you can still catch Ronald
Smith on CD: just as he’s still performing, he’s still recording. APR
has just released Ronald Smith plays Schubert (APR 5568), the
latest in a series which mixes earlier recordings with new ones – in
this instance, the ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy was laid down in March and the
two A minor Sonatas, D537 and D784, were first issued by Nimbus in 1986.
(The others bring Alkan piano music (APR 7031) and chamber works (APR
7032), Liszt (APR 5557), Chopin (APR 5565 and 5567) and Beethoven (APR
5566).) ‘Landmark stuff’, says one of the reviews quoted in the Schubert
booklet. It certainly is. But then he’s a landmark man.
Martin Anderson
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