New Zealand Varied: Stephen De Pledge (piano). Previous Library, Whangarei, New Zealand, 28.7.2024. (PSe)
Bach/Hess – Jesu, Pleasure of Man’s Needing
Haydn – Variations in F minor, Hob. XVII:6
R. Schumann – Kinderszenen, Op.15
Messiaen – Prelude ‘Chant d’Extase dans un Paysage Triste’
Debussy – Prelude ‘Ce qu’a Vu le Vent d’Ouest’
Eve de Castro-Robinson – Prelude ‘This Liquid Drift of Mild’
Chopin – Prelude, Op.28 No.5 ‘Raindrop’
Rachmaninov – Prelude, Op.23 No.2
Improvisation; (attacca) Falla – Ritual Hearth Dance
Stephen De Pledge is exhibiting indicators of changing into one thing of a daily attraction at Whangarei Music Society: throughout my time right here, he has carried out in 2012 (with Martin Rummel), 2013 (with Antipodes String Trio), 2014 (solo), adopted by a curiously giant hole till 2021 (solo). That final recital comprised a collection of his ‘favorite issues’. It’s possible you’ll be stunned to listen to that this current recital affords extra of the identical, which he described as ‘full luxurious for me’.
That’s nicely and good, however is that this symptomatic of his fount of concepts operating dry? Under no circumstances, for 2 good causes. Firstly, Stephen is a type of whose favorite music is usually the music he’s enjoying on the time, so there may be loads of it. Secondly, the majority of this batch explores one thing explicit. Thus, this overview not solely picks up the place the final one (2021) left off, but additionally has to deal with with a ‘theme’ within the recital’s second half.
Stephen began with a bit that’s most likely on many people’ ‘favourites’ listing, the so-called Jesu, Pleasure of Man’s Needing by Bach, in Myra Hess’s 1926 piano association. The arpeggiated chords ever-so-slightly elevated my eyebrows: was this a ‘romantic’ contact, or an occasion of pre-HIP authenticity? Irrespective of: Stephen performed it at a properly flowing tempo, with a agency tread and a level of the Aristocracy leavened by a smidgen of rubato – and all in the very best style!
Quite more difficult was Haydn’s Variations in F minor. It has been prompt that this can be a memorial to Maria Anna von Genzinger. Though it appears this wonderful woman regarded him merely as a agency buddy, Stephen argued forcefully that Haydn, albeit covertly, was heels over head in love along with her, his latter-day muse. Certainly, Haydn all-but-banished his customary full of life wit and glowing magnificence from this double-variations motion, while Stephen’s efficiency – with out truly embellishing the rating – elicited a jagged crescendo of wracked anguish (foreshadowing components of the Beethoven to return), which rendered the fading conclusion heartrendingly poignant.
The primary half ended with Robert Schumann’s Kinderszenen, a piece he had performed for us in 2014. Fortunately, his view hasn’t modified, in order that what I stated then applies equally to now: ‘I’m assured, by those that find out about these items, that Schumann’s affectionate tackle the kid’s imaginative world makes few calls for technically; it’s apparent even to me that it however requires prodigious expressive virtuosity. Not often have I heard Kinderszenen’s compact vignettes so deftly delineated. Stephen had scrupulously weighed each least element towards the entire, and the outcome was extra mesmerisingly magical than most that I’ve come throughout.’
After the interval got here the ‘theme’. Through the years the ‘definition’ of a prelude, Stephen stated, has modified drastically. Initially it had been merely a possibility for a performer to improvise, to provide the viewers a style of issues to return; and over the course of a century or two had step by step developed, in the end to grow to be a bit, not essentially improvisational, that gave the viewers a ‘style of one thing’. On this sense, I suppose that Kinderszenen may be thought to be an entire suite of preludes. Stephen’s particular examples had been by Messiaen, Debussy, Castro-Robinson, Chopin and Rachmaninov, which gave him an excuse (not that he wanted one!) to additional train his expertise for expressivity.
In his ‘Chant d’Extase dans un Paysage Triste’ Messiaen represented a tragic panorama by means of a sluggish, solemn ‘march’, threaded by an ecstatic music brimming with angular twiddles; the entire infused by the composer’s attribute, perfumed harmonic concord. Stephen had a superb really feel for Messiaen’s idiom, weaving these components right into a magical soundscape.
It was a neat thought to observe that with Debussy, who has typically been thought to be the final phrase in pianistic color. If Messiaen has trumped Debussy’s ace, listening to the latter’s ‘What the West Wind Noticed’ reminded us that Debussy’s soundscapes however, in their very own manner, stay distinctive. Stephen, deftly operating the notes into each other, very successfully mimicked the sound of the wind – and produced some really terrific climaxes: what the wind noticed was one thing momentous!
Kiwi composer Eve de Castro-Robinson’s 2004 prelude takes its title from Denys Trussel’s poem Spring Drift Kawhia, within the line, ‘Now hills half-stripped of gods rim this liquid drift of sunshine, and the sea-eye flashes mosaic beneath a nest of cliffs’. The beginning is sort of groping in darkness, the music step by step coalescing, rising, changing into exceedingly spiky, its very excessive notes vividly contrasting a chordal bassline; all finely rendered by the evocative De Pledge.
May we are saying that Chopin’s celebrated ‘Raindrop’ Prelude makes one thing of a companion to the previous piece? Above a left-hand accompaniment saved very regular, Stephen phrased the road elegantly, ebbing and flowing with disarming ease. The chordal centre sounded fuller and richer, however the pianist’s rhythmic pulse by no means wavered, not even when the bathe bought somewhat heavy.
Though Rachmaninov’s Op.23 No.2 doesn’t sport a guiding title, there isn’t any doubt that ‘one thing’ is expressed very strongly. Stephen attacked the music molto welly, that’s, with fearful vehemence – livid, violent, stormy within the excessive, and but with not one hair misplaced (besides maybe on the very finish). It was vicious certainly, but additionally an astonishingly grand and noble outpouring.
Apparently caught for an authentic introduction to his closing merchandise, Stephen resolved his drawback by whipping out his playing cards. Somebody on the entrance row was requested to choose three playing cards (for particulars of this mysterious process, see close to the tip of this overview right here), which yielded three notes. As these simply occurred to be the primary three notes of Maria (West Aspect Story), he modified the order and carried out an improvisation on the altered sample. This was darkish and expansive, flowing and a contact florid, and richly harmonised, ending on a moody segue into Falla’s ever-popular Ritual Hearth Dance.
I need to admit that to me this appeared far too quick – in spite of everything, it’s a virtuoso problem even on the correct pace – and by this he sacrificed a few of the piece’s primitive, pagan high quality. Nonetheless, his torrential efficiency was so spectacular that we had been simply swept alongside willy-nilly. It’s possible that the thunderous conclusion drowned out umpteen fluffs, however, being drowned out they successfully by no means existed anyway. Solely the impression mattered – and justly earned a spherical of equally thunderous applause, concluding yet one more thought-provoking, edifying and completely entertaining recital: I drool in anticipation of his subsequent one.
Paul Serotsky
