Eastern Delights
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Tibor Serly was an obscure Hungarian-American violist whose 15 minutes revolved around 17 measures of Béla Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3, which he orchestrated in 1945 after the composer literally left them incomplete on his deathbed. Bartók raced with the clock to write this piece for his wife, Ditta Pasztory, so that she would have a vehicle with which to eke out a living after his demise. Like all of Bartók’s financial schemes, however, this one failed — the world premiere was given in Philadelphia by his friend, Gyorgy Sandor, instead.
Hélene Grimaud performed this piece at Carnegie Hall in February 2004, and now Ms. Grimaud is back, this time with the NHK Orchestra of Japan — an ensemble owned and operated by a television network — and its conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy.
Ms. Grimaud has a very gentle take on this concerto, one I believe would have pleased the composer. The work is atypical of Bartók piano writing, much less percussive and much more lyrical. This pianist concentrated on the singing line and the sometimes hidden beauty of the score. Her Allegretto was notable for its lightness and superb accuracy, the touch limber but flowing.
The second movement begins with an Adagio religioso, and Ms. Grimaud played it exquisitely. It truly seemed we were in church rather than in Carnegie Hall — a sacred place of its own sort to many music fans. The middle section is a marvelous evocation of birdsong and Mr. Ashkenazy, no mean pianist himself, provided just the right touches of feathery filigree.
The NHK is a well-disciplined orchestra with a somewhat light sound. Apparently, it can also do lush, as demonstrated in this Bartók slow movement, although there was no big Romantic work on the program to confirm the musicians’ ability to sustain such silvery technique.
The soloist competently handled the final Allegro vivace, though there were some minor glitches along the way. Ultimately, though, Ms. Grimaud’s kinder, gentler version left me missing the requisite energy of the piece. That amazing ending, where the pianist makes a staggering run up the eight octaves, was less of an exclamation mark and more of a period. Good playing, but not great.
I have never thought of the Bartók 3 as colorless, but, sandwiched as it was between a multihued Daphnis and Chloé of Ravel and a work that used to be heard occasionally in this part of the world but has since faded into the mists, it seemed positively monochromatic.
Toru Takemitsu died 10 years ago but his anniversary has been eclipsed by the Mozart and Shostakovich birthdays. I first became aware of his “A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden” when Seiji Ozawa conducted it frequently in Boston in the 1980s. The work has many similarities to the Bartok and much credit should be given to Mr. Ashkenazy for recognizing and emphasizing this connection.
The birdsong parallel is obvious, but there is also a strong sense of harmonic kinship between the two pieces. Takemitsu uses five different five-note scales, while Bartok also relies heavily on the pentatonic. The general mood is also similar. Where the Bartok is spiritual in a pantheistic way, the Takemitsu is equally devotional in a surrealistic manner (the composer acknowledged that the work’s genesis was a dream).
The orchestra responded sensitively to Mr. Ashkenazy’s delicate colorations. Little touches like fleeting celesta runs and wisps of gongs were lovingly executed. The woodwinds, representing the birds, were eloquent and remarkably distinct as individual voices when performing as a group. Anyone familiar with this versatile composer’s score to Akira Kurosawa’s film “Ran”— a samurai adaptation of “Macbeth” — will recognize the sounds of nature in “Flock” as both background and parallel universe. If Leos Janacek had been born in Japan, he would have written music like this.
Interest in classical music is waning in America but is burgeoning in Japan. Supported by a huge media network, the NHK Orchestra is thriving in a city where new concert halls spring up at relatively the same rate as do Starbucks over here. If I were going to give advice to a young musician now, I would borrow a phrase from another New York newspaperman and exclaim, “Go East, Young Man!”