Contemporary touch revivifies classics
For most pianists, a program whose chief components are staples by Beethoven and Ravel would hardly raise eyebrows. But things are different when the pianist is Stephen Drury, whose name is practically synonymous with contemporary music. He has seemingly mastered every mongrel dialect of the avant-garde, from the naive to the outré, making one wonder what interpretive mien he would bring to Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” sonata and Ravel’s suite “Miroirs” on Wednesday night.
The Beethoven, a masterpiece of his late period, remains a majestically unruly work, and Drury underscored its radicalism by playing with a sense of impulsive forward momentum. Tempos were fast; pauses came abruptly, usually to draw attention to a strange harmony or odd structural detail. The playing wasn’t spotless, but Drury maintained an admirable sense of control, especially in the finale’s famously taxing fugue.
Even during the slow movement, an oasis of calm amid the surrounding tempest, he refused to loiter, opting instead for evenness and constancy. Others have elicited this music’s tragic beauty more fully, but Drury unveiled the logic behind the emotion.
The program had originally included a piece by Helmut Lachenmann, but it was replaced by John Cage’s “Winter Music.” It is an austere series of chords - some rude, some consoling - broken up by lengthy stretches of silence. And there was almost no pause between the last strains of the Cage and the rippling tones of “Noctuelles,” the first piece of “Miroirs.” The transition was startling but felt oddly right.
The Ravel impressed on every level. Rather than hide behind a dreamy haze of sound, as some pianists do in this music, Drury offered sharply etched lines and precise gradations of color, giving an angular slant to its sensuous beauty. For him Ravel seems to be not an impressionist but a master portraitist, whose images are best rendered with maximum clarity.
Each of the five pieces bristled with character. “Oiseaux tristes” was a mournful study in chiaroscuro, while the Spanish-tinged “Alborada del gracioso” was full of rhythmic snap and an almost violent swagger. And I have never heard “La vallée des cloches” played with such carefully organized layers of sound. They seemed to drift imperceptibly back into Cage’s silence as Drury’s thoroughly winning recital came to a close.
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
Stephen Drury
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