pianomania: HELENE GRIMAUD IN RECITAL / Review

HELENE GRIMAUD IN RECITAL

Victoria Concert Hall

Thursday (17 October 2024)

This review was published in Bachtrack on 21 October 2024 with the title "Hélène Grimaud splendidly unites the Three Bs in Singapore".

Outside of the Singapore International Piano Festival, the Singapore Symphony group does not often present piano recitals, but this one was an exception. French pianist Hélène Grimaud, who joined the orchestra on tour to Japan, followed up her performance of Ravel’s G major piano concerto with a solo recital of repertoire which Artur Schnabel described as “better than could be performed”.

Quite unusually, she performed the two halves of her recital on two different Steinway Ds. The first was a fire engine red beast, famously played by Lang Lang in Singapore’s 60th anniversary mega-concert to a crowd of thousands at the National Stadium in 2015.

The recital began with Beethoven’s late Sonata No.30 in E major (Op.109), a reading liberal with pedalling, coaxing a luscious sonority with much reverberance. There was no disguising that Beethoven had ushered in the Romantic era, a paradigm progression from his early sonatas influenced by Haydn and Mozart. The Prestissimo central movement was delivered with vehemence, and the finale’s Theme and Variations was distinguished by a beautifully voiced chorale theme. This was followed by some of Beethoven’s most inventive writing, looking ahead to the corresponding movement of his final sonata (Op.111), with resonating trills and the freewheeling approach of a jazzman.

Some seventy years separated autumnal Beethoven (1822) from late Brahms (1892) but no one would have guessed. Grimaud’s inclusion of two sets of the latter’s piano pieces contrasted Apollo with Dionysus. The Three Intermezzi Op.117 were his “lullabies of grief”, the hymn-like simplicity of the E flat major first then turning into the darker shades of the B flat minor second. The smouldering disquiet generated by Grimaud was gripping, with no relief provided in the even more solemn C sharp minor third. The opening bare octaves were reminiscent of Gregorian chant, then into evolving into rich harmonies which were quintessential Brahms.

The Seven Fantasies Op.116 which opened the second half were performed on a matte black Steinway D, which had a slightly mellower tone but was no less reverberant. Clearly both pianos had been tuned and voiced by a master, later revealed to be Steinway technician Walter Haass, specially flown in from Western Australia for these two concerts. Impetuosity ruled the opening Capriccio in D minor, the violence of which was a shock to the senses. The aging Brahms still had much fire in his belly, a defiance continuing in other three Capriccios, balanced by calming influences of the Intermezzos.

The big beefy tone of the final Capriccio in D minor went attacca (without break) into the Bach-Busoni Chaconne, written in the same key. There was simply no time for applause, instead Grimaud steadily built up a Gothic cathedral of sonority, its chordal excesses being a far cry from the original unaccompanied violin Partita No.2 of old Johann Sebastian. This was literally “Bach to the future”, with the 170 intervening years between both composers seemingly erased. Hans von Bülow’s “three Bs of music” – Bach, Beethoven and Brahms – had been seamlessly united in this splendid recital.

Grimaud returned to the “fire engine” for her three encores, which came from a different world altogether. Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov’s soothingly sentimental Bagatelle No.2 hovered comfortably between E minor and E major, while Rachmaninov’s Etudes-tableaux in C major and C minor (Op.33 Nos.2 & 3) did the same. Truly a balm for the ears.