To say silence is golden in the territories of oblivion that Dominika Mak created today is to underestimate the power of music in a true artists hands
Morton Feldman’s ‘Six Intermissions’ were the mainstay of her recital in Dukes Hall marking the culmination of her Professional Diploma course at the Royal Academy. Silence that was so many different things depending on how it is approached and how it is left . With Dominika’s quite extraordinary palette of sounds each silence left us in a different place. An atmosphere at 10am that I have rarely witnessed as we the audience were left stranded, astonished, disturbed but above all never indifferent and active rather than passive receivers of sound .
She had begun with Dutilleux’s Trois Préludes that were of fluidity and luminosity as she created ‘Shadows and Silence’ of whispered secrets. It was truly touch and go with ‘On the same chord’ in which the silences were an integral part of this extraordinary world of chattering insistence and quite an extraordinary kaleidoscope of sounds. Energetic explosions as the ‘ Game of opposites’ was played out with reverberations and violent declarations.
Dominika had created a special atmosphere that even she closed her I pad and tip toed off the stage so as not to disturb the world of sound that she had created.
Returning without the I pad to play Ravel’s ‘ Le Tombeau de Couperin’ which are the six movements dedicated to friends who had fallen in the First World War.
Our ears were now so finely tuned that the subtlety and ravishing beauty of Dominika’s masterly playing swept over us as I personally listened to what was a recreation of a work that until today has never convinced me .
Vlado Perlemuter was my teacher but became more of a friend as this disciple of Ravel made his Italian debut at the age of 81. I accompanied him all over Italy until he was 90 and was with him when he made his last concert appearance at the Wigmore Hall aged 91. His last public appearance was at the Victoria Hall in Geneva , a few months later, where he had made his concert debut 70 years earlier!
All this to say that listening to Dominika today I heard one of the finest performance I have ever experienced . Her scrupulous attention to the composer’s intentions and her subtle palette of sounds was allied to the crystalline clarity of a perfectly manufactured Swiss clock . There was nothing mechanical about her playing, but there was on the other hand something quite magical.
From the whispered meanderings of velvety sounds to the purity of the ‘Fugue’ that follows . A ‘Forlane’ bathed in pedal with a knowing lilt of refreshing beauty and a will o’ the wisp glow to sounds of great delicacy . A dynamic drive to the ‘Rigaudon’ played with brilliance and quixotic fantasy with the Trio played with a crystalline French bel canto .Magic was in the air with a quasi religious intensity filling the rarified atmosphere. A mellifluous ‘Menuet ‘ clad in velvet where the Trio was a quasi religious chant whispered so magically as the ‘Menuet’ floated above before disintegrating and ending in pieces . The final ‘Toccata’ had more of Mendelssohn than Prokofiev as Dominika played with poetic brilliance rather than brute force. Bursting into almost unstoppable Schubertian mellifluous invention Dominika built up the tension with masterly playing of burning intensity and quite overwhelming mastery.
ChristopherAxworthy-MusicCommentary 