University of Virginia Library

MUSIC

Was It The Cheese Souffle?

By Teri Towe

There is a school of legal
analysis known as judicial realism,
the rational of which, when pushed
to its logical extreme, holds that
the quality of a judicial decision
can depend to a great extent on
what the judges ate for breakfast.
To paraphrase Sir. W.S. Gilbert, I
fancy the rule might apply to the
criticism of music, and, in all
honesty, I hope that the cheese
souffle I ate for dinner on Tuesday
had something to do with my
disenchantment with the recital
that the pianist Agustin Anievas
gave in Cabell Hall that night.

Not The Same

Part of my disappointment
came, I am sure, from the fact that
the Anievas I heard in concert did
not seem to be the same Anievas I
had come to admire through his
splendid recording of the Brahms
Paganini Variations. At first I was
inclined to write off the recital as
one of those proverbial "off nights"
that every concert artist, no matter
how great, has from time to time,
for there was nothing unmusical
about anything that Anievas did.
Yet, there were certain aspects of
his interpretations and of his
playing in general that I found a bit
disconcerting.

Straddling Interpretation

Anievas's reading of the Mozart
G Major Sonata, KV 283, set me on
edge from the outset. I had the
impression that the pianist could
not make up his mind whether he
preferred a rich nineteenth century
approach to the score or a more
streamlined reading that was in
keeping with the results of
twentieth century Mozart
scholarship. The resulting
interpretation straddled the fence,
so to speak, and was not, to me at
least, a happy compromise.

The most intriguing aspect of
the program was Anievas's view of
the Chopin Sonata No. 3 in B
Minor, Op. 58. I don't know
whether it was conscious or
unconscious on his part, but his
reading of the opening movement
stressed its relationship to the first
movement of Beethoven's
Hammerklavier Sonata. The
allegro maestoso thus took on a
craggy, headlong, virtuoso
character that was really quite
marvelous but more appropriate to
Beethoven than to Chopin. The
slow movement was perhaps the
most unnerving aspect of the entire
evening. At first the largo seemed
too slow, but eventually it became
apparent that the tempo was not at
fault. Anievas did not seem to be
able to sustain the long melodic
lines or make them really sing. As
far as the overall interpretation of
the B Minor Sonata was concerned,
I had the distinct feeling that I was
listening to a photographic negative
of the score, if you will forgive the
mixing of aural and visual
metaphors, for the climaxes
seemed to all come in the wrong
places.

Fiendishly Difficult

After intermission, Anievas
played the Six Transcendental
Etudes after Paganini by Franz
Liszt. The choice of tempi and the
interpretations of these fiendishly
difficult studies were first rate, but
the performances were marred by
the pianist's overpedaling, a fault
that had reared its ugly head during
the first half of the program, too.
The overpedaling was more serious
in the Liszt, for the Paganini Etudes
demand a blinding clarity of
execution as well as interpretative
sensitivity. Anievas provided a
splendid reading of the scores, but
the car struggled for some
definition in the runs, tremolos,
and rapid octave passages.

Anievas's performance brought
the audience to its feet, and despite
the fact that I talked with several
individuals who had many of the
same reservations about the recital
that I did, I still cannot help but
wonder about the possible effects
of that cheese souffle