SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL CONCERT REVIEW

Haydn: Andreas Staier, fortepiano, Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall, New York City, 12.1.2010 (GG)

Haydn: Sonata in C-sharp Minor, Hob. XVI:36; Sonata in E-flat Major, Hob. XVI:49; Variations in F Minor, Hob. XVII:6, Sonata in C Minor, Hob. XVI:20, Sonata in E-flat Major, Hob. XVI:52


Like Haydn himself, the fortepiano seems familiar but is full of surprises. Haydn wrote hundreds of works in the same form and style, but with so much invention and variation in the methods and details that his music is still refreshing, after hundreds of years and hundreds of hearings. And like a Haydn symphony or sonata, the fortepiano seems a known quantity, a smaller and seemingly more delicate version of the modern piano. Yet when Andreas Staeir brought his hands down forcefully on the keyboard for the opening stroke of the C-sharp Minor sonata, the sound that came out was surprisingly, and pleasingly, delicate and subdued.

The sound of the fortepiano is not new, but the experience of seeing it played live is still charming, there is still a period where the eye and the ear adjust and start familiarizing the senses with an uncommon experience. While it cannot produce the volume of sound or sustain notes like a modern instrument, the variety of color and possibilities of articulation in the instrument are unique and expressive. Haydn sounds great on it, his short phrases, sharpness of articulation, rhythm and form are an obvious natural for it, but we still have to remind ourselves that this was the instrument the composer knew and that the one we commonly hear was not fully developed until years after his death. The type of piano music Beethoven wrote was possible on a piano that he had the opportunity to play, and just the same Haydn wrote idiomatically for his own instrument.

Staier’s recital was increasingly involving as it went along. He is a musician whose aural and musical intelligence and sense of taste seem ideally suited for Haydn and the fortepiano. His own articulation is exceedingly crisp, even staccato, and he knows how to emphasize certain musical and emotional ideas in the absence of the easy drama of the sustain pedal and a ringing fortissimo. In the C-sharp Minor sonata, his preparation of the Neapolitan suspensions in the opening movement – making a quick deceleration in tempo and then a well-judge fermata - was truly dramatic, the power was in the musical content not a bravura physical gesture. His concluding movement of this work was surprisingly wistful.

He seemed fully warmed up in the second piece, both physically and emotionally. The Sonata in E-flat Major was written for the fortepiano but the technical language is pianistic in a modern manner, it brings out what can be done on the keyboard. Staier’s playing was fluid, often brilliant, the transparency and speed of his articulation giving the phrases and illusion of a legato flow. He brought out a mellow, thrummy sound in the low register, and the wonderful Adagio was played with an expressive and beautifully subtle feel for dynamics.

The program generously featured some of Haydn’s most brilliant piano works. The Variation is a stunning piece, it’s musical involvement – constantly turning in on itself in search of further invention – produces truly intense emotionally power. The C Minor Sonata is a great work, one of the finest of the Classical era. It is music that constantly brings up doubts and answers with assurances, and Staier, belying his previous style and the instrument itself, performed it with a great legato touch. All evening long his performance revealed a constant flow of ideas about the music he was playing and this piece was the high point. At the penultimate point, the final E-flat sonata was vivacious, sociable and show-offy enough to delight without bragging. For the final moment, the encore, Staier brought out his New York City hostess, Deborah Stern, who he introduced as the foremost natural horn playing lawyer in the city. Humorously lamenting the fact that Haydn failed to produce a horn sonata, the duo played the last movement of the Beethoven Horn Sonata Op. 17 with the generosity of spirit of friends breaking out the old instruments to entertain their guests at the end of an enjoyable and diverting evening.

George Grella