MUSIC: Gloom and laughter
Steven Osborne at the Wigmore
Piano recital by Steven Osborne at the Wigmore Hall, London, 16th April 2003.
Synaesthesia is not generally my bag, but I have rarely experienced such a concrete and powerful evocation of memory by music as when listening last Saturday to Steven Osborne playing Liszt’s Funérailles. There before me, almost as if I were walking through it once again, was one of the most magnificent architectural monuments in Budapest, the Kerepesi Cemetery. Indeed I am now convinced that this stunning memorial to Hungarian history was itself a result of the spirit stirred by the patriotic Liszt in his tribute to the revolution of 1848.
To those who do not know it, Kerepesi is a glorious open-air museum of Hungarian history, sculpture and architecture. From the time of the burial of the poet Vörösmarty in 1855, attended by tens of thousands, it has been the Valhalla of the country’s greatest artists, writers, musicians, doctors, scientists, and, of course, not least, politicians. Dominated by the gigantic temple containing the body of the revolutionary leader Kossuth, (later the subject of the first symphonic poem written by Bartók), you will find there actresses, engineers, atomic physicists, composers and non-persons from the days of Communism. And also the grave of the man in whose memory Liszt composed Funérailles, Count Lajos Batthyány, executed by the Austrians in 1849 for his support of the Hungarian nationalists. Osborne conjured up the lot — the pathos and grief, the grandeur and the apotheosis. His phrasing, pedalling and handling of line was laudable, whether in haunting passages in double octaves or in fortissimo turmoil. Anyone listening who did not feel by the end a thorough Hungarian patriot has no heart. Mrs. Buchler of course approved, although I noticed her on the nod during the blandly serene (or is it serenely bland? — anyway, it goes on for ages) Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude which followed. The programme notes call the piece ‘wonderfully contemplative’ and quite a few of the audience were in deepest contemplation by its end.
This was all in the second half of Osborne’s recital and by that time I am afraid that some who had come for the rarities of the first part had bunked off. My friend Milton, for example, decided he could not share my admiration for the pianist. When I gave my opinion of his performance, at the start of the recital, of Beethoven’s op. 90 Sonata as ‘limpid’, he countered with ‘brackish’. When I said that Osborne’s style reminded me in many ways of Brendel, Milton agreed, but meant it as a put-down. I have great respect for Milton, but this time he was just wrong. Osborne does not need to wear his heart on his sleeve – he is content to let the feelings emerge through his careful and thoughtful handling of musical technique, and to credit the emotional and analytical intelligence of his audience. This should be taken as a compliment, not a fault.
Where Milton and I were in complete agreement was in applauding Osborne’s rendition of the two Contes op. 20 by Medtner (born Moscow 1880, died Golders Green 1951). This intense, powerful music is what Rachmaninov might have written had he any real ability as a composer. The second conte, in B minor, marked ‘menacingly’, and required by the composer to be played strictly in tempo throughout, is utterly terrifying in every respect. I hope that Osborne may be putting these interpretations on record soon.
His most recent recording includes the other item on Saturday’s programme, Book IV of the Esquisses of Charles-Valentin Alkan. These 49 miniatures (twice round the gamut and back to C major again) are a mini-encyclopaedia of this incredible composer’s world of sound and technique. The twelve items of Book IV (nos. 37-48) must however still be rather startling to any newcomer to this music. Some pieces radiate a Mendelssohnian innocence. Others are rather more disturbing: Les diablotins, in which fiendish note-clusters chew up the keyboard, anticipating Ives or Cowell; Héraclite et Démocrite, in which the gloomy and the laughing philosophers alternate and argue, with the latter obtaining a Pyrrhic victory; L’enharmonique in which we flail to grab hold of a defining key-note. The last piece, the serene and hypnotic En songe, quiet throughout, ends with an entirely unprepared-for fortissimo chord. Osborne writes of this as being ‘the shock of being suddenly jolted out of a daydream . . . According to taste, this is a moment of genius or idiocy’. In Osborne’s performance it was a moment of genius, albeit very eccentric genius. Listen to his recording and judge for yourself. Osborne is a most persuasive advocate.
I know I go on only too often about Alkan, but the fact that he is at last gaining a toe-hold in concert repertoires goes to show that maybe I am on to something, after all. As Osborne himself writes ‘two years ago I would have though myself as likely to be selling baseball cards on the Shopping Channel’ as playing the music of Alkan; things change! A rap on the knuckles, by the way, of the writer of the programme-notes, Misha Donat: Alkan was not a ‘close friend’ of Georges Bizet — indeed, there is no evidence that they ever even met, although Alkan’s bastard, Delaborde, was only too close a friend of Bizet’s wife. But that is another story.
Steven Osborne has come a long way since he appeared as a finalist in the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition in 1988. On the evidence of this recital he is developing an exceptional mastery; I hope that he will extend this mastery in continuing to explore the repertoire, and also gain the audiences he deserves. I look forward to his future recitals.
Allen Buchler, June 18, 2003 01:50 PM