Ax finds form in fantasy in Carnegie recital

New York Classical Review
One might have known an evening of fantasy with Emanuel Ax was not going to be a random walk.

The pianist, known for compelling, straight-no-chaser performances of keyboard classics, played five pieces Thursday night in Carnegie Hall, four of which had some form of “fantasy” in the title. But there was no relaxation of his standards when it came to finding and communicating the entire shape of a piece.

The two sonatas that Beethoven labeled “quasi una fantasia” and published together as his Op. 27 had plenty of structure, just not the particular sequence of movements that had become a convention by 1801, when he composed them. Hearing both on the same program was like meeting two siblings with a family resemblance but contrasting personalities: the E-flat major gentle with a mischievous streak, the C-sharp minor (“Moonlight”) dark and brooding with a violent temper. Composed in the first year of a new century, one looked back to an age of good manners, the other ahead to an era of Romantic subjectivity and turmoil.

The pianist played the tidy opening of the E-flat Sonata with a touch of freedom, as if he were making it up as he went along. The spirit of fantasy continued with a sudden bright idea, Presto, in a whole different key, C major. A sense of flow within and between these sections carried the listener along. The same was true of the following movements, played without a break as the composer instructed: a scherzo surging in smooth waves, a rich-toned aria for a baritone over a steady adagio pulse, and a rambunctious rondo that paused to remember the baritone’s song before racing to the finish.

Instead of simply playing the two sonatas back to back, Ax cannily inserted between them a meditation on Beethoven by John Corigliano, Fantasia on an Ostinato. Composing a test piece for contestants in the 1985 Van Cliburn Competition, Corigliano began with a repeating rhythm (ostinato) from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, then emphasized imagination over digital virtuosity by supplying the players with a sort of Lego box of “interlocking repeated patterns” and inviting them to improvise with it.

The piece has lived on far beyond the competition, as a number of prominent pianists have taken up Corigliano’s challenge. Ax’s version on Thursday began and ended with echoes of Beethoven’s symphony, but spent most of the time exploring sonorities with hands overlapping in the middle of the keyboard, with only occasional excursions to upper and lower ranges, or into more forte dynamics. The effect was mesmerizing.

There was of course applause for Corigliano’s clever concept and Ax’s subtle pianism–and the composer, 87, rose at his seat to acknowledge it–but one wondered how it would have been to follow the piece’s pianissimo close immediately, quasi una fantasia, with Beethoven’s hushed “Moonlight” ripples.

Again Ax allowed himself just a touch of freedom in those slow triplets, a human presence amid the steady ostinato. The Adagio melody sang in tones like black pearls, and unfolded with the glacial dignity of a slowed-down Bach chorale. The pianist emphasized lightness and grace in the Allegretto, recalling Liszt’s description of it as “a flower between two abysses.”

The furious finale flowed, a cataract now instead of a moonlit lake, its chutes and jets and eddies artfully shaped by the pianist, at least until the rocks themselves came loose in the violent coda.

A different kind of liquid quality characterized Schumann’s Arabeske, Op. 18, as its little tune burbled out with slightly different inflections each time it returned. Ax made sure one heard that each of the minor-key episodes was based on a variant of that same theme. This outwardly trifling piece, which even the composer spoke of dismissively, actually had a lot going on.

One could say Schumann’s three-movement Fantasy in C major, Op. 17—with its dual inspiration of a love letter to Clara and a monument to Beethoven–was a fantasy “quasi una sonata,” especially the way Ax kept its ecstatic effusions and tender murmurs on an expressive track in the eager first movement. Ax allowed the hearty march movement to steal in quietly at first, but drove it to a triumphant conclusion.

Ax waited a long time for the march’s final chord to die away before embarking on this piece’s most fantasy-like movement, a meditation on longing for the distant beloved in which the composer seems lost in the woods, stopping and starting over in another key, remembering past happiness, hovering between despair and acceptance. Ax’s performance was alive to every nuance of feeling in this most Romantic of finales.

The pianist responded to the audience’s ovation with a single encore, Liszt’s transcription of Schubert’s song “Ständchen,” delicately tracing its echo effects.