Photo credit: Julien Jourdes

Concert Review: Yefim Bronfman, 4 April 2019

Every year, around early April, a music festival called Bacchanal descends upon Columbia University. Because a weekend of freely flowing beer, pheromones, and hip-hop was simply untenable for your correspondent, he decided instead to spend an evening in the soft glow of Carnegie Hall and flee campus soon thereafter. And so he warmly applauded Mr. Bronfman, famed for his recent performance of the complete Prokofiev piano sonatas but capable in repertoire from Bach and Mozart to Shostakovich and Bartók, as he stepped out before a filled but not full Stern Auditorium.

Tonight's program was a tour of 19th-century pianism: from early Debussy and early Schumann in the first half before a conclusion of late Schubert. First reading the program, your correspondent raised an eyebrow askance: why would Mr. Bronfman pair a bright Debussy suite with a humorous Schumann cycle while letting the grave Schubert sonata stand alone? Moreover, since the Schumann cycle was about the same length as the Schubert sonata, the program would be lopsided in timing as well. But your correspondent folded his doubts and welcomed Mr. Bronfman, and he is glad he did so: today's recital was one of the most delightful and enjoyable concerts in recent memory.

The first piece was Claude Debussy's Suite Bergamasque, famed for its third movement, Clair de Lune. But all four of its movements are exceptional in their own way: from the playful prélude and the jaunty menuet to the, well, lunar Clair de Lune and propulsive passepied, each piece could more than hold its own if it were published separately; together, they add to a suite of bewildering beauty that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Mr. Bronfman began rather suddenly; attendees were still settling into their seats after welcoming him when that unmistakable opening filled the hall. The first movement was pleasing, but somewhat prosaic; early Debussy can sometimes sound like late Chopin—compare the prélude with Chopin's berceuse, for example—and that has never been Mr. Bronfman's strength, either. The menuet was amusing and light, with well-judged accents and lyrical passages that evoked the meandering path of a Parisian salon or a bourgeois ball. The true gem, however, was the Clair de Lune. It is almost verboten for a "serious" listener of classical music to like the Clair de Lune, but this interpretation imbued that well-worn music with the same magic that it held when your correspondent had first heard it. The opening chord sequence was taken pppp, as close to silent without actually being silent; to make way for the sound, the entire hall seemed to hold its breath. Throughout the piece, Mr. Bronfman's dynamic control was beyond perfect; the ominous chordal sections perfectly conjured clouds covering a full moon, while the arpeggios cascaded up and down the keyboard as easily as a nocturnal breeze would blow through trees. The concluding minute of the piece was one of the most ethereal, magical experiences of your correspondent's concert-going career: time itself seemed to come to a standstill. It was a wonder that the hall did not cheer at the conclusion. Thankfully, it did not, for the passepied, full of verve and drive, remained. It was taken somewhat slower than other interpretations, but the heavy staccati (reminiscent of Mr. Bronfman's Prokofiev) and the minimal use of pedal came together in a compelling counterpoint to the preceding movement. The ending flitted toward opposite ends of the piano, lightly evaporating into the air; and the hall finally collapsed into rapturous applause.

Some minutes later, Mr. Bronfman reappeared for the Humoreske, op. 20, by Robert Schumann. This is a single-movement (or seven-movement, depending on how you interpret Schumann's tempo markings) suite, at turns humorous, menacing, and ecstatic. Schumann reportedly wrote this piece in a single week, but it is not any less admirable for that fact. It is similar to other pieces of his pre-marriage life: like the Kreisleriana, it has moments of fantasy and improvisation; like the Kinderszenen, beautiful melodies suffuse the work; like the Symphonic Etudes, virtuosity and drama are in no short supply. And yet, it is also a work as unique and as enjoyable as anything Schumann wrote.

The piece is difficult, thematically and harmonically—the music wanders into keys far away from its home of B-flat Major, and opens in F-sharp, which is as out-of-place as snow in Florida; the pianist must create a sense of coherence throughout the nearly half-hour performance. Mr. Bronfman's "first" movement, Einfach (literally "easy," but often interpreted as "casually"), indeed had a genteel, flowing beginning. From Einfach, the sections in G Minor, B-flat's harmonic opposite, were contrasting as well: Mr. Bronfman drove the piece more than played it; however, there was little sense of rush, and his performance excited and filled the hall with energy. Exceptional among the seven movements was the third; it is not the most famous in the Humoreske, but Mr. Bronfman's music would have made even an unfamiliar listener sit upright. He took the artistic liberty of extending the bass chord using the special middle pedal, which imitates the effect of an organ's pedal tones. The music seemed to travel down the piano's legs and into the structure of the hall itself, much as a mighty pipe organ's sound would. There were some moments of bravado and confusion; some movements felt rushed through, as if they were being played merely as a part of the whole. And on one occasion, Mr. Bronfman released his hands and the music, making it seem as though the piece were at an end; such showmanship seems almost to tempt the audience into applauding at the wrong place. Nevertheless, the ending of the collection was brilliant and satisfying: bright chords in the treble created a sense of bells pealing their joy, while ecstatic French-overture gestures—four notes of the same scale mashed almost simultaneously—could only be described as "impossibly beautiful." Though Mr. Bronfman did not convey the structure of the overall work as well as your correspondent feels could have been possible, the beauty of so many individual moments almost made up for it.

The final piece of the evening was Schubert's Sonata in C Minor, one of Schubert's three Late Sonatas. It is a composition of structural, harmonic, and simple aesthetic brilliance that belies Schubert's deteriorating body at the time of writing—he would die of syphilis less than a year later. Though Beethoven had eviscerated the sonata form almost a decade ago—his Late Sonatas caused, by classical standards, a scandal among the nineteenth-century nobility, and one of them, the op. 111, deemed too difficult and incoherent, wasn't performed until half a century after its composition—Schubert lends to the classical sonata form grandeur, placidity, and intimacy, the likes of which Beethoven achieved only by twisting the sonata form apart and Mozart never did. Mr. Bronfman's Schubert was muscular, taut, and uncompromising from beginning to end, and brought the hall to its feet four times at its conclusion.

The first movement was played much faster than a typical performance, but Mr. Bronfman's fine control of the piece meant that no moment felt rushed, unstable, or prosaic; rather, one could feel the energy crackling from the maestro and his piano. The best part of the sonata was the famous second movement; in contrast to the first movement's opening chords and soaring arpeggios, this movement is a study in stasis, in conjuring music and beauty from rests and echoes, in reaching beyond happiness and strife to find ecstasy and despair. Mr. Bronfman's perfectly judged sense of ppp as well as his extraordinary delicacy in voicing the movement's multi-tiered melodic architecture, was almost oppressive in its beauty. And, even in the sections where the music roused itself and lumbered forward, the music's (Schubert's? Mr. Bronfman's?) pain held the hall in rapt paralysis. Mr. Bronfman's greatest strength this evening lay in creating a sense of eternity—in your correspondent's opinion, one of the highest compliments that can be paid to a musician. The minuet and its accompanying trio were brisk and edgy, while the relentless finale was simply brilliant. Sviatoslav Richter's blazing account may be the most famous interpretation of this piece, but Mr. Bronfman was not far behind. The first, so-called "galloping" theme sprinted across the soundscape, while the secondary theme, played with two hands that repeatedly cross over and under each other up and down the keyboard, evoked two animals chasing each other through a forest. Broad tempi fluctuations in slower sections could forgivably be disapproved of, but the slowdowns provided moments of respite from all the leaps and sounded especially sweet. The sonata concluded with two mighty chords that immediately brought the hall to a standing ovation.

What might Debussy—then just a fledgling composer eking out his place amongst the Parisian intelligentsia—, Schumann—who wrote Humoreske as a love letter to his future wife, Clara—, or Schubert—waiting to see whether consumption, carnal disease, or composing would kill him first—think upon seeing a large Russian man in a dinner suit play their music to nearly three thousand, mostly-silent audience members? Your correspondent thinks that while they would think it was rather unusual (the solo recital as a mode of performance was not created until the mid-19th century), they would also be delighted to see such a stupendous pianist give their music all he could. And that is all one could ask for during any excellent concert.

[Written 2019; lightly revised 2022]