Nimble Tread

Merci, Botox!

Christmas came to London early this year – or its spoils did, anyhow – in the form of Leon Fleisher, pianist of Jedi-like repute and newly-minted octogenarian.  Mr. Fleisher faced a Wigmore Hall crowd whose members couldn’t have been more supportive if their own mothers were on stage, and treated them to a flurry of delightful pieces for solo piano that began with a foursome by Bach. 
Fleisher plays Bach’s music exquisitely and in an expansive style, charging it with an uncommon reverence that hovers somewhere between a front parlor and a church nave.  Anyone who’s heard Fleisher’s Two Hands cd will have a sense of my meaning.  They’d also have come upon some familiar pieces at tonight’s concert, including Sheep May Safely Graze from Cantata 208, which Fleisher played with a tenderness befitting the song’s idyllic title.  Somewhat less evocative was his performance of Brahms’ left-hand transcription of Bach's D minor Chaconne, which began impressively with the piano sounding an awful lot like a violin, but lost some of its panache when it came to rattling off arpeggios, which require some fancy fingering and extreme cunning to be played fluidly.  The piece’s performance wasn’t without it emotional virtues, though, and anyways it was followed by three Debussy preludes, Le vent dans la plaine, La cathédrale engloutie, and La puerta del vino, which were played with absolute style and had wonderful character. 
From Debussy it  was on to Albéniz, whose music’s warm climate was hardly in keeping with the present season.  However incongruous it might have been to hear the sounds of sun-burnt Iberia in a hall full of late-autumn coughs and wheezes, the music was played well and in a relatively lilt-free manner that made the pieces, Evocación and El puerto from 'Iberia' Book I, sound more solid than usual.  I suppose that Albéniz, like molasses, increases in viscosity following a drop in the mercury.
The concert was brought to a close with three Chopin pieces, the Mazurka in C sharp minor Op. 50 No. 3; the Nocturne in D flat Op. 27 No. 2; and the Scherzo No. 3 in C sharp minor Op. 39, all of which were played with remarkable touch and minimal rubato, the result being exactly one spellbound audience and absolutely no coughing for nearly twenty minutes, which may well be a Wigmore Hall cold season record.  Fleisher doesn’t play Chopin with the transparency of some other players, but he has such incredible tone that the music still sounds great even when it gathers in something of a muddle.  This was especially apparent in the scherzo, and for that matter in his playing of Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D minor BWV 903 earlier in the evening. 
It was an exceedingly enjoyable concert that, coupled with his masterclass at the Royal Academy of Music the other day, provides all the incentive I need to wish for Mr. Fleisher’s  speedy return to London’s performing stage, which, incidentally, will be early next year when he'll play Mozart's Piano Concerto 23 with the London Phil. 

Boom Boom

The air is heavy with burnt gunpowder tonight, and that's thanks to Guy Fawkes, who tried to blow up the House of Lords and James I four-hundred-and-three years ago today.  It was all very dramatic -- the authorities allegedly snatched him just as he was about to set torch to powder in Parliament's cellar -- and Fawkes and his cronies were hanged, drawn, and quartered for his efforts.  After being tortured, of course.  But their infamy lives on, and is commemorated by the thousands of low-grade munitions that are set off in gardens and parks across London.  A few of my neighbours got in on the act, which was nice of them, and at 8:30 or so I had the distinct feeling that I was in Beirut sometime in the mid-80s. 
The pyrotechnics have now subsided, but only temporarily.  A small section of the city will come a-crackle next Tuesday, when Henning Kraggerud takes to the Wigmore stage to play violin sonatas by Mozart, Franck, and Grieg.  For those of you who've never heard the Noregian play, now's your chance.  Programme and ticket info can be found here.  Ka-Blammo!!

A New Mandate

I haven't had the internet at home for a couple of weeks, which has been a strange and fortunately temporary experience.  All my web-based activities have come courtesy of my iPhone and the Apple Store's wireless network, both of which are handy but not exactly ideal.  I should be up and running at home soon, but I thought I'd post a quick note about election watching parties in London.  I've heard of lots of little ones, and a few big ones, the most noteworthy being the convention-themed night at the East Room, in Shoreditch (£125 per for dinner, drinks, pancakes, coffee, and coverage 'til 9am), the meat-sweaty gathering at the Chicago Rib Shack in Knightsbridge (£25 for dinner, coverage, and a bite to eat in the morning), and finally the bizarre night club-cum-newsroom experience at the infamous Yates Wine Lodge in Leicester Square (£35-100 for food, booze, a mock election, merchandise, and coverage).  A lot of pubs and restaurants will doubtless have their TVs tuned to the election, so it shouldn't be too hard to find a place to join in on the collective breath holding as the American electorate heads to the polls.  For those voters who have somehow remained undecided, I offer the following excerpt from the November 3rd issue of The New Yorker and its feature on Chuck Hagel:

For Hagel, almost as disturbing as Palin’s lack of experience is her willingness – in disparaging remarks about Joe Biden’s long Senate career, for example – to belittle the notion that experience is important.  “There’s no question, she knows her market,” Hagel said.  “She knows her audience, and she’s going right after them.  And I’ll tell you why that’s dangerous.  It’s dangerous because you don’t want to define down the standards in any institution, ever, in life.  You want to always strive to define standards up.  If you start defining standards down – “Well, I don’t have a big education, I don’t have experience” – yes, there’s a point to be made that not all the smartest people come out of Yale or Harvard.  But to intentionally define down in some kind of wild populism, that those things don’t count in a complicated, dangerous world – that’s dangerous in itself. 

“There was a political party in this country called the Know-Nothings,” he continued.  “And we’re getting on the fringe of that, with these one-issue voters – pro-choice or pro-life.  Important issue, I know that.  But, my goodness.  The world is blowing up everywhere, and I just don’t think that is a responsible way to see the world, on that one issue.  And interestingly enough, that is one issue that stopped John McCain from picking one of the people he really wanted, Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge.”