A Musical Jaunt Around the World
Stephen Sulich is a pianist who gave a concert at St. Paul's Chapel on Monday, but local music fans may remember him better as a former conductor of the New York City Opera. Just in case his mother is reading these pages, let's end the suspense early: This was a wonderful recital.
Mr. Sulich presented music from six different countries and in the process gave a veritable master class on the arcane art of keyboard touch. He began with a short piece by the Catalan composer Federico Mompou, titled Cancion y Danza 7. This was a particularly airy performance, unhurried and exquisitely diaphanous. The pianist didn't so much shape his phrases as caress them. He adopted a ruminative approach, as if each melodic snippet was a profound thought about music. Masterful.
Without pause, Mr. Sulich then shifted gears to the jazzy side of Francis Poulenc, specifically Novelette sur un theme de Manuel de Falla. There was, of course, a Spanish connection to the first piece, but this homage was still thoroughly Gallic, a stroll down the boulevard in a carefree manner. The jazz idiom was especially apt for this recital, as Mr. Sulich had obviously spent a lot of time thinking about the architecture of the program as a whole and had come up with the idea of infusing an improvisatory feel to the performance. Thus, he did not often stand to acknowledge applause, and instead let one work flow into the next. Many listeners may have been a bit lost during this presentation, but it was a dreamlike sense of being lost, a hazy night at a club. Although I was in church, I had a strong craving for a Chivas.
Mr. Sulich has an arsenal of gestures that he uses in his music making. Those who have heard the Finnish pianist Olli Mustonen play live might remember that he flaps his arms and waggles his fingers distractingly. Mr. Mustonen's over-the-top gestures, however, wouldn't be half as objectionable if his pianism were a little better. Mr. Sulich employs the gesticulations of a conductor, exhorting the piano to sound more expansive, more passionate, more lyrical. At this high level of excellence, he could create shadow animals on the wall with his fingers and it wouldn't bother me.
Prokofiev piano music is notoriously difficult — the composer had abnormally large hands — and one of the most devilish is Sarcasms, which Mr. Sulich handled with ease. Belying his previous soft touch, he demonstrated strong–handed steeliness in these acerbic miniatures. Prokofiev wrote these demonic aphorisms in 1914 as a direct response to Russian critics who found his First Piano Concerto a bit too modernistic. At that particular moment, choosing to establish himself as an enfant terrible, the rebellious youth determined to leap over the edge, a decision that would cost him dearly in the later Soviet era. Mr. Sulich's engineering of the Allegro precipitato was amazingly dexterous, the Smanioso ("Raving") unapologetically dissonant, the Precipitosissomo-like music from another planet. This is the type of rough-weather navigation that separates the men from the boys.
Continuing that lounge atmosphere, Mr. Sulich then offered a set representing three different countries and styles. Beginning with Samuel Barber's sensitive Nocturne, Op. 33, he progressed to one of Sergei Rachmaninoff's most beautiful — and, incidentally, the last — piano pieces, a transcription of the Tchaikovsky song "Lullaby," Op. 16, No. 1. Rounding out the travelogue were three colorful dances of the Argentinian Alberto Ginastera.
The finale of this lovely set was the moonlight interlude from Richard Strauss's opera "Capriccio." One of the glorious aspects of late Strauss orchestration is its transparency, making a piano version of this gorgeous scene quite appropriate. Here Mr. Sulich was back in the pit, creating a rarified world of beauty lost and magically regained. His sure sense of dynamics led to a thrilling crescendo that fulfilled the piano's ability to sound ever more emotional. Perhaps the baby grand was simply responding to his previous eloquent pantomime.
