The QEH has, mercifully, abandoned its experiment with
video 'enhancement' trained onto the keyboard, but even if your seats
were not at the preferred keyboard side (where the sound of a piano
is often inferior!) there was no problem about 'seeing the hands' of
this pianist. Olli Mustonen offered a visual show of unique self-indulgence
- one wondered if a choreographer should have been listed in his CV
credits. For a quiet note, his right hand may descend from above head
height; describe arabesques in the air, and sometimes he flutters his
fingers. Significant moments are brought to our attention by attacking
the keyboard from the back of his head, at others from a bizarre gesture
at the back of his neck, as if he had to brush away an irritating insect.
One could only guess that all this was based upon some alternative-medicine
notion of relaxation, a world away from the unostentatious poise of
Sokolov
for whom such antics would be anathema.
To the music, and Mustonen's idea of building two two-hour
combined programmes from his own chosen sequence of these master works
- the first double CD set up in the foyer for purchase afterwards and
for The Signing. It was as quirky and predictably unpredictable as appearances
made one fear. Hard, spiky tone, high velocity to demonstrate finger
dexterity, exaggerations of dynamics with 'expressive' hairpins in slower
pieces; as mannered to hear with eyes shut as when watching with total
disbelief at this display of the cult of the personality, and the perpetual
search for the new and different, to market performers of our time.
For Bach 's '48', Ralph Kirkpatrick on the clavichord
(which has the capacity of its successor for dynamic shading) restores
some sense of historical style (DG Archiv 463
601-2). For the modern piano, spend your money better with
Angela Hewitt or Bernard Roberts (Nimbus NI5508/11
4); for Shostakovich, there is Tatyana Nicolaieva, the original
dedicatee of the 24 Preludes & Fugues (Melodia
74321 19849-2).
Peter Grahame Woolf
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