The Best of the Ballade

In the mid-19th century, the genre known as the piano ballade illuminated the Central European night like a flash of lightning. Invented by Chopin in 1836, its ascendancy ended in 1854 with Brahms’s Op. 10 Ballades. There are only 10 of these narrative, poetic pieces of any import, and Emmanuel Ax played nine of them Sunday afternoon at Carnegie Hall – four by Chopin, one by Liszt, and four by Brahms.Taking the three composers in reverse chronological order, Mr. Ax began with Brahms’s “Four Ballades,” and delivered an interesting, if idiosyncratic, set. He is an expert in playing softly, revealing in his quietude pellucid inner voices. This is the quality that makes Mr. Ax such a favorite at Mostly Mozart, where his whispered utterances remind audiences of the world before the powerful pianoforte. His use of this same interpretive technique for Brahms was illuminating, as was Mr. Ax’s contention that the slower of these pieces, in particular the No. 2 in D Major, should be offered at a rather brisk pace. (Glenn Gould also heard early Brahms this way.) In any case, the playing was mesmerizing.Surrounding the Brahms were the New York premieres of two works commissioned by Mr. Ax, Chen Yi’s “Ji-Dong-Nuo” and Kaija Saariaho’s “Ballade.” The former, a travelogue reworking of an old Chinese folk ballad, seemed to have been lost in translation. The ballad and the ballade are two very different types of music and, at least here, the twain did not meet. If nothing else, the piece offered yet more proof that contemporary composers absolutely love the highest and lowest octaves of the keyboard.Much more substantial musically and delicate architecturally was the ballade of Ms. Saariaho, a composer who has built a solid reputation in Finland. Here was an intricate design, constructed like the web of a spider, complete with dramatic drops of dew splashing and shimmering. This type of tone poetry is perfect for an artist as sensitive and as confident as Mr. Ax, although the audience granted it only tepid applause. Lizst’s Ballade No. 2 in B minor ended the first half of this pointillistically polychromatic program.The second half of the program reminded me lovingly of a recital by Vladimir Horowitz. This was strong handed pianism filled with untamed Sturm und Drang.Bearing in mind that Chopin never intended these four pieces – each written in a different year and loosely based on the poetry of countryman Adam Mickiewicz – to be played as a set, a curious phenomenon occurs whenever they receive a fine performance in numerical order, as they did this afternoon.The G minor is immediately recognized by patrons as the most famous of the grouping and one that will send chills when played as forcefully as it was by Mr. Ax. Next came the F major, and this now unabashedly fortissimo pianist embroidered with ambuscades of arpeggiated material, all dramatic but delivered in such a tasteful manner that there was no sense of fuzziness. Playing softly while revealing subtleties is difficult enough, but Mr. Ax can produce revelations even at a high volume. Eschewing rubato, he put his signature on this complex music by employing lucid individual-note dynamics. The tempo remained steady but the phrase interpretation turned ever so slightly and on an achingly beautiful axis.Then came the third ballade, and here I realized all of a sudden that it is not the G minor but rather this A-flat major that is the jewel in the crown, the “famous” one, if you will. Starting ever so wistfully, Mr. Ax built his edifice superbly.Here the incessant left hand drives deep into the listener’s consciousness, so that, as the tempo accelerates thrillingly, the listener wonders whether the pianist will be able to control the beast until the very end. When he does, as Mr. Ax did this day, the ending is unbelievably exciting, orgasmic. The outburst of applause was well-deserved and begs the question why this piece is never placed last on the program.And I’m not even sure if Emmanuel Ax was the best pianist in the room: I spotted Yefim Bronfman in the enthusiastic crowd.

The Best of the Ballade

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