Carpathian Impressions in Review
Éva Polgár, piano; László Borbély, piano; Gábor Varga, jazz piano
Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York, NY
November 27, 2022
A fascinating recital was put together this Sunday at Zankel Hall by pianists Éva Polgár, László Borbély, and Gábor Varga, focusing on music from what was termed “Carpathian” regions of Europe – to include music of Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály, and Franz Liszt, with improvisations by Gábor Varga.
I expected strong performances from Ms. Polgár, whom I last heard in November of 2019 (in an excellent trio with violinist Kristóf Baráti and clarinetist Bence Szepesi), and I was not disappointed. What’s more, the entire recital was eye-opening (or “ear-opening” one should say) in its traversal of music highlighting connections among these three composers. Bartók and Kodály have been routinely linked by their shared national music, but Liszt has tended to tower over the world of Romantic piano as a solitary, cosmopolitan genius belonging to no single country or school; it was thus refreshing to hear selections of his – especially his three Csardas and Sursum Corda (in addition to the oft-played Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6) – which, by their placement on the program, were shown to foreshadow the work of Bartók and Kodály in matters of tonal language, rhythm, and repetition.
Speaking of program placement, one quibble Sunday was the degree to which the program order was altered from what was printed, so much so that there were several announcements through the evening of switches along the way (not in repertoire, just sequence), and my program was covered with a roadmap of arrows. Much of the repertoire I know by ear, but because of rapid introductions, the order of improvisations on six Hungarian Folk melodies by Gábor Varga remained a blur. More on those later. It seems that for such an important venue, the program order should be tightened up before printing.
On to the music, the evening started with a fiery performance of Bulgarian Rhythm, the first piece from Bartók’s Mikrokosmos for two pianos, Sz. 108 (arranged by the composer himself from his one-piano version). László Borbély joined Ms. Polgár for it in what proved to be a superb two-piano pairing. They followed with #2, #6, and #3 from this same set (closing the whole program with the rest). I was going to describe the next as characterized by chords and trills – but Bartók took all that fun away by calling it – you guessed it – Chords and trills. The same applies to Chromatic invention and Perpetuum mobile – all played with expert synchronization.
Mr. Borbély followed with Bartók’s famous Allegro Barbaro, showing not just a fine technical grasp but a stylishness and freedom in delineating phrases, rather than the robotic approach one hears too often. He followed this with Bartók’s Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs, Op 20, alternately quiet, deeply felt, and dancelike.
It can’t have been easy to follow such polished performances of notated music with music yet to be improvised – and I’m not sure how fair it is to the improviser to place the two together on a program – but that challenge fell to Gábor Varga who played next (several of his six improvisations, don’t ask me which – though the evocative titles mentioned birds, a village, a forest, wells, a poor man, and the Danube). Mr. Varga has a keyboard facility that incorporates the repetitive dreamy textures one associates with “New Age” music, along with jazz in a more percussive and virtuosic vein. Some of his improvisations exploited tremolos that brought to mind the cimbalom, an instrument commonly associated with Hungarian music, and some seemed simply to drift and explore at great length. Moments were emotional and evocative but other more diffuse sections, which would have been “par for the course” in a jazz lounge setting, were a bit taxing to an audience in the midst of crystallized and practiced compositions – especially as the evening progressed. One high point was an apparent fragment of a key motif from Allegro Barbaro, which we had just heard – thus tying the program together.
Ms. Polgár capped off the first half with Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6, faring beautifully with the repeated octaves for which the piece is famous – or infamous, to pianists. Occasionally, as with many pianists who are focused on the perils in the right hand, she could have devoted a bit more care to some left-hand parts, but all in all, it sent us joyfully into intermission.
The second half opened with more from Ms. Polgár, starting with Liszt’s Sursum corda, from Book III of Années de Pelerinages. It is a late and rather exploratory work, which happened to attract Bartók (and there exists a recording of him playing it). With its unusual use of whole tones that anticipate twentieth-century French music, it led well to the next piece, Zoltán Kodály’s Meditations on a theme by Debussy (1907). It also hearkened back to the Allegro Barbaro in some motives – among the remarkable connections throughout the evening. Kodály’s winsome Valsette, with its comical pentatonic passagework, closed Ms. Polgár’s group.
More improvisations from Mr. Varga followed, leading to the three Liszt Csárdás from 1881-4, played by Mr. Borbély (Csárdás, Csárdás obstinée, S. 225, and Csárdás macabre, S. 224). These are pieces requiring vigor, even obsessiveness, and Mr. Borbély played with almost maniacal virtuosity.
The previously omitted Mikrokosmos for two pianos closed the program, finding Mr. Borbély and Ms. Polgár teaming up again in an irresistible collaboration. As a bonus, Mr. Varga burst onto the stage to start at one piano what became a three-pianist reprise of the opening Bulgarian rhythm of Bartók, complete with some seat-switching antics from the Borbély-Polgár side of the stage. It would have been even more delightful had the entire program been shortened by at least thirty minutes. Including intermission the concert had run well past 9:30, having started at 7:30. No matter how great any performers may be, to extend the time to this point is asking too much from an audience, particularly in this frequently percussive repertoire. Sometimes less is more. A second encore followed posthaste, which I could not follow to the end, having just headed for the escalator.
