On Friday,
October 9th, the first concert of the 4th Con spirito season took place
in the Eduard Toldrà Auditorium of the Barcelona Municipal Conservatory of
Music. The concert series is organized by the Muzio Clementi Association of
Barcelona in collaboration with the conservatory. The spirit of the cycle is to
promote Clementi's musical legacy, his music, his influence on other composers,
and his impact on the language of the piano. The concerts are performed on the
1847 Collard & Collard, late Clementi, Collard & Collard piano,
owned by Curro Bultó, which was restored by Jaume Barmona with funding from the
Association that manages it. The Association has temporarily loaned the piano
to the Conservatory, through an agreement, for musical and educational use.
Clementi
offers a musical platform with a distinctive personality. It is no wonder he
was considered "The Father of Modern Piano Music." Undoubtedly, he
was one of the greatest experts on the piano of his time in all aspects, and he
even built them himself. His music is complex, rational, yet charged with
passion, especially in his later works, which clearly point toward a Romanticism
where passages of virtuosic display coexist with moments of the most intimate
and personal reflection.
Naruhiko
Kawaguchi is an
expert on the fortepiano and the Romantic piano. For this reason, the program
he performed was a perfect fit for the Collard & Collard piano,
which straddles the line between the antique and modern pianos.
He opened
his recital with the Adagio sostenuto in F major, piece number 14 from
the first volume of Gradus ad Parnassum, published in three volumes
between 1817 and 1826. This Adagio is a reworking for solo piano of the
second movement of the Duet for Piano Four Hands, Op. 14 No. 1. Op. 1,
written in 1786, is a reflective and restrained work, Mozartian in spirit,
which Kawaguchi linked to the Caprice in B-flat major, Op. 17, of 1787.
The latter is divided into five uninterrupted sections. The odd-numbered
sections are built upon the same thematic ideas, with brilliant passages in the
style of a fantasia or improvisation, while the even-numbered sections consist
of two songs very popular in London at the time: “Ma chère amie” and “For
Tenderness formed.” It is, therefore, a work that was intended to particularly
appeal to music lovers familiar with the fashionable music of the day.
Next, he
performed Trois airs carácters de bailes nationales espagnoles, Op. 17,
by Santiago de Masarnau (Madrid, 1805-1882), published in 1837. These dances—Boleros,
Tirana, and Manchegas—belong to the Romantic music that idealizes an
intimate and poetic Spanish folklore and anticipates the work of the celebrated
Albéniz and Granados. It should be noted that Kawaguchi has a great interest in
Spanish music and interprets it with great subtlety and rhythmic sense.
The
following work took us to Vienna: The Impromptu in C minor, D. 899 No.
1, by Franz Schubert, composed in 1827, a year before his death and just a few
months after Beethoven's. Could this fact have contributed to its profound and
tragic character? In any case, Kawaguchi's interpretation was very personal and
full of drama. The final section of the recital consisted of pieces 94 and 95
from the third volume of Gradus ad Parnassum and the great Caprice in
E minor, Op. 41 No. 1. We are truly talking about Clementi's last piano
works. Stravaganza (No. 94) represents a step forward in his aesthetic,
and perhaps with this title he intends to justify its singularity. It could
pass for a prelude by Chopin or even Scriabin. The tonal journey of the piece
is structured in four sections on a circle of major thirds: F – A – D-flat
(enharmonic equivalent of C-sharp) and F. A melody of eighth notes in the
center of the piano, sung by the left hand, which also plays the bass,
dialogues with an arabesque melody of expressive intervals that adds notes in
each section, culminating in a developed coda of light and brilliant chromatic
passages, achieving a wide tessitura, and ending with chords. Bizarria
(No. 95), in C major and duple meter, is written entirely in sixteenth-note quintuplets
in vivace tempo, passing through difficult positions that require a light,
Chopin-esque touch. Kawaguchi excelled in these two exercises.
The last
piece performed, Clementi's Caprice Op. 47 No. 1, is a formally
impressive, experimental, and dramatic work. It possesses great imagination and
harmonic and formal freedom. Along with some numbers from the Gradus, it
is one of the composer's most aesthetically advanced works. The opening Adagio
features a long, single pedal point to achieve an ethereal sound, as will occur
at other points in the work. These resonances are typical of the English
musical style and correspond to its pianos. Throughout the entire composition,
which consists of four sections equivalent to linked movements of a sonata, the
musical analysis surprises us with the wealth of motivic, harmonic, and
rhythmic resources deployed to create a striking and intensely passionate work.
The final section evokes the style of Schubert.
Naruhiko
Kawaguchi's performance is simply masterful. Little needs to be said about his
utterly natural technique, which seeks not exhibitionism but the true essence
of the music. His delivery is like that of an actor, always engaging with the
audience, as if saying, "Look at this," and underscoring musical
details with simple yet effective gestures, without resorting to the
exaggeration or histrionics seen in some well-known performers. He conveys the
shifts in character like a narrator, as if there were many characters in the
musical action.
What
impressed us most was his ability to command the piano and exploit its unique
sonic qualities. This is not surprising in a performer accustomed to playing
instruments as varied and distinct as historical pianos. Unlike the modern
piano, where the aim is maximum homogeneity in mechanical and sonic response,
with historical pianos the performer must experiment with the timbral variety
and different types of action they present, differences in weight, depth, and,
above all, timbral response. In this recital, Kawaguchi demonstrated his skill
in this area, exploring an extensive palette of colors. From the ethereal sound
of an Aeolian claw to a sustained fortissimo, always adapted to the
possibilities of the Collard & Collard.
This
performance was acclaimed by the audience, and Kawaguchi offered as an encore a
delicate piece by Jesús Guridi, Nostalgia, from Tres piezas breves
(Three Short Pieces), from 1910.
Joan Josep Gutiérrez
LISTEN TO THE FULL RECITAL https://www.youtube.com/live/Vtb-FMNYZbQ?si=-UHNkMN3UsFtnIFp&t=471
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