WAAPA Music Auditorium
reviewed by Neville Cohn
Prior to the performance at WAAPA Auditorium on Saturday, how many concertgoers, I wondered, would have realised that the opening item on the program, listed as Bagatelle in A minor, was, in fact, the much-loved Fur Elise? And as Geoffrey Lancaster ushered in what could arguably be the most famous of any keyboard piece described as bagatelle, there was a faint but nonetheless audible sigh of recognition as Fur Elise registered its presence. Prior to that, we listened to a very brief overture to the celebrated bagatelle, a flurry followed by a more sober statement that led into the piece proper.
This was of course, standard performance practice in Beethoven’s day.
But as Fur Elise unfolded, I noticed a number of concertgoers turning to their companions with a puzzled look. Others seemed almost offended.
These were perfectly understandable reactions because the underlying beat of the bagatelle was often extraordinarily elastic, now an acceleration, now much slower and introverted.
It’s playing that is utterly at odds with current conventional treatment of the piece.
But this was not some wilful or eccentric caprice on Lancaster’s part. On the contrary, what we were listening to was the product of years – decades – searching for musical truth – and offered with an authority born of the most detailed research.
For those with access to the very first recordings made by pianists in the early years of last century – many of these are now available – it may well be instructive, even revelatory, to discover how similar to Lancaster’s keyboard approach to Fur Elise some of these very early recordings are. Careful listening to these will show how much in evidence this elasticity of the beat the playing of the era was, how frequently hands were not precisely in accord with one another. There’s a mood of extemporisation to much of it.
But within a remarkably short period after those first recordings being made available, this manner of performance was to vanish almost completely to be replaced by the far stricter treatment of rhythm and hand co-ordination that we now take for granted. And Lancaster is at the forefront of those bringing back that style into play (no pun intended). It’s too early to tell whether it will ultimately prevail.
It takes considerable courage to place so drastic an alteration to the status quo before the public. It’s an initiative that can so easily backfire courtesy of those who won’t hear (no pun intended) of so drastic a change to the status quo. It’s the music equivalent of an earthquake.
We also listened to Beethoven’s Rondos opus 51. These are great favourites with earnest young piano pupils at local eisteddfodau. But, again, as in Lancaster’s treatment of Fur Elise, there was authority in every measure as we were taken back in time to listen to music as those in Beethoven’s time might well have experienced it. Sonata in C minor from opus 10 (most of the program consisted of music in either C major or C Minor) was frankly fascinating; it was if we were hearing it for the very first time – and as Beethoven himself might have wanted it to sound.
James Huntingford played, inter alia, the Waldstein sonata, music that is no-man’s-land for any other than musicians with complete physical mastery of the instrument. I especially admired the closing pages of the first movement, given magical treatment, the sound reaching the ear as if through layers of fine gauze. It called to mind Moiseiwitch’s unforgettable 78rpm recording for HMV made during the 1950s.. The Pathetique sonata, too, fell well on the ear. Its lengthy adagio introduction could hardly have been bettered. On the evidence of this performance, Huntingford is clearly a fortepianist on the rise.
