Lucas I have heard several times and always playing very beautifully but today was really a very special occasion because of the breadth and sweep that he brought to all he played. Allied to a tone palette of great range and beauty this was a musician who could sculpt music in sound. I asked him afterwards about this remarkable new vision as a maturer musician and he told me that he had been working with Murray Perahia. This great musician has opened a door for Lucas where his talent and mastery could flourish and delve ever more deeply into the scores. Just as Perahia himself had done with Horowitz who opened up a new vision for him and as Rubinstein had done for Zimerman. Three of the greatest pianists I have ever heard sharing so generously their secrets and allowing the performer to get ever nearer to the composer’s intentions with selfless dedication.
The concert was presented by The Polish Cultural Institute together with the NLC Asia Circle of Yisha Xue and it was dedicated directly and indirectly to Chopin. Three original works by Chopin were preceded by Kreisleriana by Schumann that the composer dedicated to his friend Chopin.
Kreisleriana is a very dramatic work and is viewed by some critics as one of Schumann’s finest compositions. In 1839, soon after publishing it, Schumann called it “my favourite work”, remarking that “The title conveys nothing to any but Germans. Kreisler is one of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s creations, an eccentric, wild, and witty conductor.”
Schumann wrote to his wife and mother of their eight children, Clara: “I’m overflowing with music and beautiful melodies now – imagine, since my last letter I’ve finished another whole notebook of new pieces. I intend to call it Kreisleriana. You and one of your ideas play the main role in it, and I want to dedicate it to you – yes, to you and nobody else – and then you will smile so sweetly when you discover yourself in it.”
Lucas the moment he sat at the piano immediately burst into the impetuous romantic outpouring of Schumann’s Kreisleriana . Playing of passionate intensity but also giving the music an architectural shape of great importance with a continual surging forward of sumptuous full sounds. By contrast, the central episode, maintaining the same tempo, was played with disarming simplicity shaping the melodic line with refined poetic beauty. The second piece was played with a beautiful flowing tempo allowing the melodic line to unfold with inner counterpoints that sparkled like jewels from within. Lucas managed a perfect legato line which contrasted with the spiky brilliance of the first Intermezzo and the beautiful romantic sweep of the second. Schumann’s untangling counterpoints were played with great musicianship which led so naturally to the return of the long legato melody. A disarming ending was played with whispered eloquence.
In the third piece it was in the central episode that Lucas gave a great romantic sweep of fluidity out of which the melodic line emerged with intensity and beauty. The rhythmic outer passages were played with a dynamic drive and enticing rhythmic impetus. An ending of passionate romantic sweep and mastery as the fourth piece opened with subtle whispered sounds with a duet between the voices of magical glistening beauty. An ending of poignancy and intensity where the magnificent deep bass notes on this beautiful Steinway ‘D’ piano were allowed to resonate with sumptuous rich warmth. He brought an impish good humour to the fifth piece but also moments of great romantic sweep as contrast. An intensity to this passionate central outpouring was soon dispelled with the impish good humour of the return of the opening. An imperiousness to the sixth piece that he played with masterly restraint and authority gradually melting into a mellifluous outpouring of whispered nostalgia. Brilliance and an extraordinary harmonic sense were the hallmark to the seventh piece played with astonishing mastery and as Schumann had written, with the left hand that is so often shared with then right and thus robbed of its inherent struggle. Keeping the intensity to the coda where it was magically transformed into chords but without breaking the musical line or architectural shape. He brought a clarity to the clumsy impish meanderings of last episode that burst into a seamless outpouring of romantic ardour in the sumptuous tenor register only to be interrupted by the clumsy lumberings of the opening again. This time interrupted by a passionate outpouring of imperious authority before again succumbing to the fleeting meanderings of the opening that took the music into the bass of the piano with whispered sounds disappearing into the distance.
The Mazurka op 63 n. 2 is one of the last of Chopin’s 59 Mazurkas, just two pages in which Lucas immediately revealed his Polish ancestry with playing of disarming simplicity and whispered delicacy. An extraordinary control of sound of refined aristocratic sentiment. The Nocturne in F op 15 was played with glowing beauty gently leaning on inner notes that gave depth and poignant meaning to this very simple outpouring. The central ‘con fuoco’ was played with dramatic intensity but always within the same sound world of the opening which gave an architectural shape of intense meaning to this beautiful Nocturne.
It was in the Fantaisie in F minor that Lucas revealed his great musicianship as he was able to shape one of Chopin’s longest single works into a unified whole where even the central episode grew out of the passionate intensity that preceded it. Playing of aristocratic elegance and beauty building to a passionate outpouring of romantic sweep. A remarkable technical mastery but always with the control of a musician who had a vision of this entire tone poem that Chopin was depicting in sound. A scrupulous attention to the composer markings adding even the final long echoing pedal that brings such etherial mystery to the ending of this extraordinary work.
An encore, by great demand from a very full hall, allowed Lucas to intone the magical ‘Arietta’,the first of the 66 Lyric Pieces by Grieg that are rarely heard in the concert hall but that Lucas played with palpitating whispered beauty. Intensity without sentimentality as he had shown us throughout his recital today. A recital that demonstrated above all the humility and mastery of an artist at the service of the composer.
https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2024/03/20/christopher-axworthy-dip-ram-aram/
