Dominika Mak with her final recital at the Royal Academy illuminated the piano with sounds that were vibrant and living , reaching out to her audience more eloquently than words ever could .
Seeing Dame Myra Hess in the place of honour on the staircase of the Royal Academy and Dame Moura Lympany just nearby, one is reminded that it is quality not quantity that counts in music making.
The ability with subtle inflections of sound that can make the piano speak a language that is more powerful than words because beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Each eye sees differently depending on their sensibility. But as there are,according to Matthay, an infinite possibility of sound in each key so there are an infinite way of interpreting the sounds.
Uncle Tobbs as Myra Hess and Moura Lympany used to call him created ways of reaching those sounds and wrote numerous tomes about technical matters that somehow can separate sound from matter and one gets lost in a maze of technical mechanics.
The core of the matter is that music is sound and different sounds create different emotions .
It was Nadia Boulanger who told us, over and over again, on this very stage that ‘Words without thought no more to heaven go ‘ quoting from Shakespeare.
Dominika Mak has this rare gift of being able to find sounds that others do not know exist.
The Variations in F minor by Haydn unwound with simplicity and ravishing beauty.Trills that were like vibrations of sound each one with a different meaning as simple scales became a living stream of undulating beauty. There was dynamic drive and passion too but always under an umbrella of sounds with an architectural shape that was like looking at a beautifully shaped Renaissance monument of perfect Da Vinci proportions .
Mazurkas op 33 by Chopin that were a plaintive voice of poetic poignancy .There was exhilaration and exuberance too but with dynamic contrasts made of delectable style and aristocratic good taste. Above all there was a beguiling freedom of ethereal dance that made one realise what Schumann meant when he described Chopin’s Mazurkas as canons covered in flowers.
Messiaen too was brought vividly to life and I was reminded of Rubinstein playing Prokofiev’s Vision Fugitives that were made to speak this different language but still the language of sounds that have a message to carry .
Messiaen with his clashing and heart rending pungent sounds and wailing noses at the extremes of the keyboard can as in Dominika’s hands have the meaning and desperation of a true believer
Gaspard de La Nuit was written by Ravel with the intention of outdoing Balakirev for transcendental difficulty but with Dominika this was not an option or even a consideration.
Difficulties might have meant spending more time at the keyboard in her studio but we were not aware of that, as the sounds and fantasy wove a web of wondrous beauty in a work too often used as a warhorse by battalions of fighting infantrymen .
Here the water nymph could emerge from waters of ravishing beauty as the piano was awash with radiance . The desolate gallows could sit so bleakly in the sun as it was so clear for whom the bell was tolling.
Sounds in Scarbo that I have never heard before, with a middle episode that was a diabolical cauldron of x certificate sounds . The impish Scarbo flitting over the keys, darting here and there like a will o’ the wisp never knowing where he was going to appear next. A massive culmination of diabolical melodic outpouring where Dominika pulled out all her mastery of an art that conceals art but always one that is concerned with communication not technical gymnastics. An hour of true music making ‘old style’!? Sheep may safely graze in Dominika’s masterly hands.
ChristopherAxworthy-MusicCommentary 