Anton Nel, piano (1987 Piano Award)
Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York, NY
December 3, 2018
The ultra-prestigious Naumburg competition is held for piano every four years (and for other instruments and ensembles in the intervening years). The 1987 winner was South-African born Anton Nel, whose award recital I attended, with great pleasure. After Monday’s return performance, I certainly hope I won’t have to wait another thirty years to hear him again. This was a superb recital in every possible way. Everything one could ever have desired from each piece on the program was delivered sumptuously, with joyful ebullience, heartbreaking lyricism, attention to detail, and of course technique in spades. Mr. Nel is truly a “musician’s musician,” so deeply committed to every nuance in each piece, ones that often are in plain sight but ignored by the less-gifted; and he does all this while never losing the “long line.” He never sounds stilted or studied, instead one has the feeling that he is composing the music right on the spot, a real gift. He “becomes” each composer, yet never loses his own personality. I guess I could stop writing now, but I’m sure you’ll want to hear about the various composers represented.
The recital had four standards and one rarity, I’m sure each was chosen in a very personal way by Mr. Nel, whose involvement was as deep and true as one often says of actors: that they are completely identified with their role(s).
Mr. Nel began with five Debussy preludes, and let me state right away what a pleasure it was to hear these programmed exactly the way Debussy himself used to give them: not as marathons of all twelve of one book, let alone all twenty-four of both. Mr. Nel thoughtfully chose from both books, alternating extrovert selections with mysterious ones. He showed a delightfully rambunctious quality in the two having to do with (now politically incorrect) minstrel shows that were so popular in turn-of-the-century Paris. You could just hear Général Lavine-eccentrique, not a General of course, only an acrobat dressed up as one, walking on a slender balancing beam and suddenly doing a backflip, then resuming his pace as if nothing had happened; and the prelude Minstrels, with its sly cat-and-mouse, stop-and-start flirtation and music hall charm. Voiles (veils or sails) was a paragon of perfect voicing, what the French call les plans sonores (the sonorous levels). They were exquisitely maintained, and the existential mystery projected with refinement. After all, isn’t a sail a sort of veil tied to a mast for propulsion, anyway? La Sérénade interrompue was Debussy at his Spanish-like best. De Falla always said that Debussy understood Spain better than the Spanish, and was able to translate that into music. Ondine showed another kind of flirtation, so different from Ravel’s same-titled temptress. Debussy’s seems much less voluptuous, perhaps more malevolent, though the story is about luring a mortal to his watery demise in any case.
Mr. Nel then turned to what, for me, was the spiritual heart of the recital, a rapturous rendering of Schubert’s Drei Klavierstücke (Impromptus aus dem Nachlass, D. 946), another miraculous product of the final year of a too-short life. The second of them, a “Viennese barcarolle,” with its five-part form instead of the customary three, would seem to point to what he could have created had he lived longer (for example, a closing fourth impromptu). For me, one of the secrets to playing Schubert well is the possession of infinite amounts of two things: 1) affectionate and passionate lyricism combined with intimacy, and 2) patience. Mr. Nel has that and so much more. The color shifts, so often brought about by a breath-stopping half-step shift, were incredibly vivid, and he never played the same phrase exactly the same way, in music that has so many repeats. His hushed playing was gorgeous, never losing the singing core so vital to success. The final piece, a bumptious stylized Bohemian dance-scherzo, revealed, in its interior, an almost static meditation-variation in D-flat that proceeded, as Alfred Brendel always said of Schubert, “with the assurance of the sleepwalker.”
After intermission, Mr. Nel put his experience with early fortepianos and harpsichords to good use in a stunning performance of one of Mozart’s “bigger” piano sonatas, the D major, K. 311. Here, his fingers were curved, with the last joint nearly vertical, thus giving the sparkly “ping” that makes this music work. But it was in his affectionate treatment of the lyrical moments that he showed his deep understanding for and empathy with this hybrid of concerto, opera, and symphony. He played it with great humor and tenderness, sacrificing neither for the other.
Then came the one rarity: Kodály’s Méditation sur un motif de Claude Debussy, inspired by a trip to Paris where he heard the Debussy String Quartet. The main thematic material of the Kodály is indeed a greatly slowed down version of the Debussy Scherzo movement, although I’ve always found it drenched in the atmosphere of the grotto scene from Pelléas et Mélisande; it has a certain dark fatality. It does, as Mr. Nel said in his engaging oral program notes, sound more French than Hungarian to be sure. Mr. Nel played it with appropriate mystery, rising to its one rather large climax, subsiding once more into the shadows.
Mr. Nel then closed the recital with a showpiece, Chopin’s Grande Polonaise Brillante “preceded by an Andante spianato,” as Chopin’s publisher’s designation once had it. The Polonaise is a much earlier composition than the Andante. Spianato means “even, smooth” and this was spun out by Mr. Nel, who had the taste to dispatch the little flowerings of Bellini-inspired coloratura that are the bane of clumsy pianists perfectly. The Andante is interrupted by a very poignant, nostalgic mazurka fragment, if you will, then it returns. A brief fanfare for the orchestra (in this case, just the pianist) is thirteen measures of music that I know give pianists more terrors than all the difficulties in the rest of the piece, so awkward is the writing. Mr. Nel’s version could not have been more confident, accurate, or stylish. His Polonaise Brillante, too, had all the flash one could want, while maintaining elegance, even in the mad dash to the bravura close.
The nearly sold-out hall leapt to its feet as one, and was favored by two encores: Sibelius’ Romance in D-Flat major, Op. 24 No. 9 (gorgeous), and Chabrier’s French “country bumpkins” in his Scherzo-Valse (Pièces pittoresques, No. 10), full of good humor and good champagne.
Please come back often with more great programming and your unique ability to move audiences with your playing, Mr. Nel!
