Bach, Goldberg Variations: Olli Mustonen (piano). Queen Elizabeth Hall, London 01.03.2007 (ED)

 

The programme note to Olli Mustonen’s recital starts with a quotation from Mustonen himself on Bach’s Goldberg Variations: “It is as if the listener is being invited to witness the miracle of creation itself… myriads of life forms born out of a single beginning … governed by the timeless and immutable laws of nature… living evidence of the overwhelming wisdom, love and force of life radiating from their omnipotent creator.” I can scarcely disagree with his words; I just wish his playing backed them up.

 

Mustonen has seemingly never taken the easy path with his music making. When I first heard him around a dozen years ago he played Beethoven as if it was a cross between late Liszt and Scriabin. I had hoped that time might have had a calming effect, but apparently not. Before I cast him as an enfant terrible – and one seemingly without a distasteful persona I should add – who staunchly refuses to grow up, the influence that composing and increasingly conducting have on his piano playing should be borne in mind. Composers can hear the work of others with distinctive ears, as it were, which is all very well; the problem is that this does not always make for comfortable interpretations for an audience to endure.

 

Acceptance of a modern Steinway sound in Bach I find no problem; frankly, if it was good enough for Glenn Gould then it is good enough for me, though I am equally willing to accept a period instrument viewpoint also. I do have problems however when the full-on sound of the modern instrument is used as unimaginatively as Mustonen did throughout his sight-read seventy minute, all repeats observed, traversal of the score. The opening Aria, in itself a slightly clumsy motif but one made great by the variations Bach takes it through, showed up some key areas of vulnerability: imbalance of presence between the hands with the right over-dominating in several trills and phrases torn apart into statements lacking in any fluidity or gentle heartbeat that should at least indicate the beginning of an eternal creation.

 

The ensuing sequence of variations and canons left me asking what exactly the purpose of the concert was. It showed by turns some needlessly prestissimo playing, repeats given with exactly the same uncaring pace and weight as their first appearance, a propensity for angularity of rhythm and jarring accents within the overall line, use of dynamic extremes seemingly for their own ends and, perhaps most annoying of all, notes that were clipped of their true values even when the music was allowed some degree of introspection. The work’s structure was shabby at best, so little substance did Mustonen draw from the variations and the canons in terms of their form.  Who or what was more important: Bach or Mustonen, the music or the self-conscious display of pretentious arm waving and furious brow mopping taking place on stage?

 

If towards the end of the variations some evenness of playing did finally allow Bach to emerge robustly voiced, it was too little, too late. The Aria da capo carried neither conviction of intent nor the sense of inevitability that it should.  On reflection after the event, and with idiosyncrasies of the performance apart, I could just about see that Mustonen might have intended this as a reading fit for a post-modern, sterile world, such as his compositions can inhabit. Surely then the futility of this music – and therefore the performance – is all the more starkly drawn. There is no place for any spiritually yearning omnipotent creator under such a circumstance: Bach as music with meaning becomes pointless, being rendered merely as sequences of notes.

 

Oftentimes I am tempted to think that over-exposure to a favoured recording can run the risk of deadening the ear to the merits of a live experience when it happens. Equally, though, the greatest recordings are useful in bringing to mind the respect that composers and their works deserve to be treated with. Not for a very long time in the aftermath of a concert have I sought their restorative influence with such urgency.

 

Evan Dickerson