Ivan Moravec reviews 2003

I have just returned to the Detroit area from Indianapolis, where I heard Moravec perform the Mozart D Minor Concerto with the Indianapolis Symphony. I last heard him perform in a memorable solo program in Chicago one year ago (he has not played in Detroit in quite a while).

Lately, I have pondered what it is he does so much better than most other pianists. I think I have discovered part of the secret. My own teacher is fond of reminding me that a true legato is not possible on a piano, and that one must work hard to give the illusion of a smooth line. Moravec is the ultimate illusionist, because in his hands the piano appears to do all that a singer can do. Every phrase is magnificient, noticeable tonight especially in the slow movement. However, even his allegros managed to sing their lines in a seemingly effortless manner. In addition, his voicing of melody was superb, accented and enriched by that utterly crisp bass line we have come to love in his playing. He must literally take every phrase of music apart and figure out how to connect the musical line note by note, lifting one key at precisely the right moment and depressing the next. What a marvel to hear!

The Indianapolis Symphony under guest conductor Philipe Jordan (coming himself to Detroit this week to conduct that orchestra) was responsive and brilliant, and Moravec himself applauded them profusely afterwards. Unfortunately, Moravec was too ill to stay and sign cds--let's wish him a speedy recovery from whatever bug is ailing him.

Fantastic performance yesterday evening in Prague.

Trau keinem unter 70, jedenfalls nicht, wenn es um späte Brahms-Klavierstücke geht: Die beiden Intermezzi op. 117.2 und op. 118.2 hatten eine Leichtigkeit und Selbstverständlichkeit unter den Händen von Ivan Moravec, als schriebe er, wie der Zauberer im Märchen, mit dem Finger in den Himmel und ließe daraus die buntesten Bilder und Formen entstehen. Brahms’ dunkle Akkordik, sonst oft massiv und gefühlig im Vordergrund, war kaum mehr wahrnehmbar, war zwar immer noch ein wichtiger Baustoff, aber eben doch ein Baustein aus Luft. In den glücklichsten Momenten spannte Moravec, geboren 1930 und zeitweilig Schüler Michelangelis, Schlichtheit und Kraft derart souverän zusammen, dass kaum mehr klar wurde, aus welcher Richtung die Töne denn nur hereinregneten.

Pure Sinnlichkeit ist das aber nicht, es steht manch kluger Gedanke dahinter, der die Türen zur plötzlichen Erkenntnis weit aufzustoßen vermag. Schönster Coup des Abends war vielleicht der zart aber beharrlich überpunktierte Rhythmus in der „Kuriosen Geschichte“ aus Schumanns „Kinderszenen“, mit dem Moravec den jugendlichen Erzähler als eifrigen, kecken Schwadroneur greifbar nah hinstellte und beinahe schon den „Ritter vom Steckenpferd“ vorausnahm.

Moravec lenkt die Aufmerksamkeit des Hörers aufs Innere, er schärft das Interesse fürs Unspektakuläre. So viel Zurückhaltung kann bisweilen langatmig scheinen, kann, wenn es ihr an Energie fehlt, in Spannungslosigkeit und Routine umschlagen. Beethovens 32 c-moll-Variationen hat Moravec vor 30 Jahren für die Platte sicher ungleich drängender gespielt, und sicher ließ sich ihm nun im Herkulessaal mancher Irrtum vorhalten oder manches arg konservative Tempo. Doch wird ihm keiner seine Nachlässigkeiten vorrechnen wollen, wo immer wieder, wie in Chopins b-moll-Sonate, so viel Nachdruck und Emphase durchblitzten.

Just a few words about Ivan Moravec's concert in the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz palace on Wednesday, April 30th. The programme was not exactly as advertised and consisted of the following:

BEETHOVEN - 32 Variations in C minor SCHUMANN - Kinderszenen BRAHMS - Intermezzo, B minor op 117; Capriccio, B minor op 76; Intermezzo A major op 118; Rhapsody G minor, Op 79 Interval CHOPIN - Sonata, B minor plus two Chopin mazurkas as encores.

The hall was more than three quarters full and the audience highly enthusiastic. Moreover Munich's leading newspaper, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, gave a shortish but highly favourable review on May 5th (delayed because of the Mayday holiday). Alas, I do not have time to translate it but enclose the text [above]. I agree with most of what the critic had to say. I should add that for me the revelation was Kinderszenen. I have both Ivan Moravec's recordings and have heard him play the piece in concert at least half a dozen times. This time it seemed more touching and poetic than ever before - a chain of infinitesimal differences from previous performances that, for me, added up to a revelation. Just the kind of thing one so often hopes for from a "live" concert but, with all too many artists, rarely gets. When I mentioned some of the changes to Mr Moravec afterwards he remarked, smiling: "Yes, it's work in progress."

In the deafening din of this world, a quiet space for contemplation is a gift beyond price. In his performance Friday in the Schubert Club's International Artist Series at the Ordway Center in St. Paul, the great Czech pianist Ivan Moravec bestowed that gift on his listeners. Their gratitude was palpable.

This writer first encountered Moravec in the late 1960s through LP recordings on the obscure Connoisseur Society label. They were engrossing.

Clearly, Moravec's playing was rooted in the grand romantic tradition. But that tradition had been internalized, with all its self-congratulatory heroics pared away. As Moravec himself put it in a master class on Thursday, one felt the silence behind the notes. His was a chastened, post-Holocaust pianism, its virtuosity refracted through pain.

More than 30 years later, Moravec is still working the garden staked out in those revelatory LPs, still cultivating a circumscribed repertoire: Mozart, Chopin, Brahms, Debussy and a handful of others.

With many musicians, this preoccupation with a narrow slice of the literature would suggest creative sclerosis. With Moravec, it attests to the seriousness of his calling, and to a reverence for the inexhaustible life he finds in the scores of his chosen masters.

Friday's recital moved from Schumann to Debussy via Chopin and Brahms. In Schumann's "Scenes from Childhood," Moravec's veneer of light-heartedness did not conceal a somber undertow. This was a troubled childhood, recollected in comparative tranquillity.

Two works of Chopin, particularly the wonderful "F-minor Ballade," called forth the pianist's firm and resonant tone -- the envy of colleagues far better known. Moravec's marvelously differentiated use of sonority is structural, not decorative. He never thunders like Horowitz or seduces like Rubinstein. Yet it was through mastery of tone that he held the episodic ballade together.

In Brahms, Moravec finds a sensibility akin to his own, and his accounts of two late intermezzi were compellingly confident. Best of all was Debussy's "Pour le piano," both in the brilliance of its outer movements and in the solemn grace of its central Sarabande.

On stage, Moravec is a picture of sober concentration. He cuts applause short, beginning each new piece before his listeners have finished acknowledging the last, as if their clapping intrudes on the musical space he inhabits. He sits almost motionless at the keyboard; there is no miming of the music. He can appear remote, even severe. But with eyes closed, the distance vanishes.

Occasionally, I found myself wishing for a flash of raw emotion, a momentary eruption of something elemental amid such austerity and control. But at a time when shock, if not awe, is never farther than the nearest television, Moravec's depth and decorum are what we need most.

Mozart wrote some of his most sublime music for the city of Prague. On Friday evening, Prague returned the compliment when native son Ivan Moravec played Mozart's Piano Concerto in A Major, K. 488, with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. It was an experience of the highest order. In a lifetime of concertgoing, one will rarely hear a performance of such poetic concentration, such grave beauty.

Moravec approaches Mozart from the romantic perspective, infusing the concerto with a measure of 19th-century subjectivity. Conductor Nicholas McGegan, who led Friday's concert, approaches him from the baroque, emphasizing rhythmic lift and animation. They are hardly an obvious pair. But the tension between their approaches corresponds to a dualism in the music itself. What might have been a stylistic muddle proves instead to illuminate the recesses of the concerto.

There is no filigree in Moravec's Mozart, nothing merely ornamental. Every note carries musical meaning. Even in faster movements, he intimates that he has all the time in the world. He knows how to accentuate a note by playing it not more loudly but more softly than its neighbors. His micromanipulation of the piano's sustaining pedal deserves a dissertation.

In the searching Adagio at the concerto's heart, Moravec was spellbinding. Tenderly accompanied by McGegan, he made a single, spare line -- something any child could play -- into a cry of muted grief. No hint of preciosity deflected the music's melancholic flow. To turn from these depths to the lively final movement -- begun almost without pause -- was wrenching.

In the company of such luminous Mozart, the three French works that rounded out Friday's program had an also-ran quality. Jacques Ibert's "Homage to Mozart" was the slightest of them. This is exquisite fluff, but it enshrines a frilly, rococo conception of its honoree, wholly at odds with Mozart à la Moravec. The juxtaposition was a little jarring.

Benno Sachs' arrangement for 11 instruments of Debussy's "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun" was prepared for the use of Arnold Schoenberg's Society for Private Musical Performances in post-World War I Vienna. Played Friday with an enlarged string complement, Sachs' arrangement trades sensuality for transparency. Although the reduction has moments of unaccustomed poise and color, it is unlikely to grab market share from the original.

Charles Gounod's Symphony No. 1 is ballet music in symphonic packaging. There is nothing remotely original about it. But it lends itself marvelously to McGegan's exuberant, rhythmically vivacious manner. For this listener, McGegan's conducting recalled the suave élan of Sir Thomas Beecham, who had the knack of making such music sound better than it is.

Throughout the concert, the orchestra, especially its solo winds, played outrageously well.