concert review: Chopinity
Mar. 15th, 2011 08:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacWent back to the hoffable* Schultz Cultural Arts Hall, driest acoustics on the planet, for a piano recital. Louis Lortie played an all-Chopin program. If you ever thought Chopin was a composer who could spin the most airy and delicate of lace, the answer is: not in this room he isn't.
Nor was the repertoire the most likely to show off that side of him. It was his complete Etudes. Not even all 24 of them, but all 27 of them. Complete. My appreciation of Chopin is kind of hazy at the best of times, and the Etudes are probably the department I'm least familiar with. I only know two of them: one's the "Revolutionary" Etude and the other isn't. An etude is a practice exercise, so even if it's also art it's a workout. So not much of the recital was quiet and ethereal, even if it could have been in this venue. Lots of storming up and down the keyboard, up and down, up and down, on and on and on, magnified by Lortie's straight-ahead style and the acoustics. I began replaying in my mind the videos I've seen of tsunami waves ruthlessly sloshing up streets in Japan.
The version of this concert in Herbst a few days ago got rave reviews for its color and subtlety. Not this time.
*Hoffable, as in, "Holl, Holl, a Hoffable Hellerump!"
Nor was the repertoire the most likely to show off that side of him. It was his complete Etudes. Not even all 24 of them, but all 27 of them. Complete. My appreciation of Chopin is kind of hazy at the best of times, and the Etudes are probably the department I'm least familiar with. I only know two of them: one's the "Revolutionary" Etude and the other isn't. An etude is a practice exercise, so even if it's also art it's a workout. So not much of the recital was quiet and ethereal, even if it could have been in this venue. Lots of storming up and down the keyboard, up and down, up and down, on and on and on, magnified by Lortie's straight-ahead style and the acoustics. I began replaying in my mind the videos I've seen of tsunami waves ruthlessly sloshing up streets in Japan.
The version of this concert in Herbst a few days ago got rave reviews for its color and subtlety. Not this time.
*Hoffable, as in, "Holl, Holl, a Hoffable Hellerump!"
