Pianist Mira Armij Gill in Review
Mira Armij Gill, pianist; Francisco Salazar, violin
Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, New York
Sunday February 25, 2024
Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall was packed this Sunday with an audience eager to hear pianist Mira Armij Gill play a program of Samuel Barber – and they were amply rewarded. The concert was billed as “In Memory of John Browning” (1933-2003). Mr. Browning was of course (among other distinctions) an outstanding champion of Barber’s music, and he was also one of Ms. Gill’s teachers at the Juilliard School, where she received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. For those unable to attend Sunday’s performance – or for those who want to hear the music again – a CD of her playing this same repertoire has been released just this month on the Centaur label, now available for purchase from major streaming and retail sites. Autographed CDs are also available for purchase at her website via the following link: CD).
For a (mostly) single-composer program, this concert was artfully varied. It helped that, in addition to playing Barber’s Sonata Op. 26 (1949), Excursions Op. 20 (1944-48), Ballade Op. 46 (1977), and Nocturne Op. 33 (1959), Ms. Gill was joined by her husband, violinist Francisco Salazar, in Barber’s Canzone Op. 38a (1962), the essence of which many would recognize from the slow movement of Barber’s Piano Concerto Op. 38 (in one of its incarnations from 1962 – the Elegy for flute and piano of 1959 being another). This change in instrumental timbres brought welcome refreshment to the program – and the duo played it beautifully together.
As soloist, Mira Gill clearly demonstrated that she has earned the many laurels that appear in her biography. She is gifted with both technical facility and interpretive imagination. The first piece, Barber’s Nocturne, opened with a warm, lovely sound. Though it had some of the unease that can beset recital openings, it progressed quickly to more involved music-making, with some moments that were truly inspired. The trill towards the end, which Barber marks with the rather unusual instruction trattenuto,was absolutely transporting.
Next came a moving rendition of Barber’s achingly beautiful Canzone by Ms. Gill with her husband Francisco Salazar. Though this reviewer prefers the tonal purity of the flute instrumentation of the original Elegy, the duo made the piece their own, with some generous slides and a ravishing final note from Mr. Salazar.
The Excursions were a great choice to follow, brimming with Americana to finish off the first half. Moments of these gems seemed again a bit less than settled, but certainly such moments would not exist on the newly released CD. If one were to guess, the issue could have been the shift between collaborative and solo playing, the adjustment from tablet for chamber score-reading back to rack-less piano for the solo works – or simply the stress of many friends needing to find a seat in the hall, as they seemed to stream in for much of the rather brief (twenty-eight-minute) first half. In any case, the rhythms were not quite as steady or motoric as one wants in the first piece, and there were momentary glitches here and there in the others. The third Excursion, though – the musical heart of the set – was played to a tee. This listener is quite fussy about that third Excursion, but Ms. Gill could give a masterclass on it, right down to the perfect final voicing and pedal change. The audience seemed to agree and could not restrain their applause.
The second half opened with the only non-Barber work, the Romance for violin and piano by Reinhold Glière, played in moving tribute to the memory of the recently departed sound engineer and producer, Joe Patrych. For all of us who miss Joe and his ubiquitous presence in the New York music world, it was hard to hold back tears.
On the subject of musicians we’ve lost, this listener could only wonder throughout the concert what insights about Barber may have emerged from Ms. Gill’s lessons with John Browning. There were moments in Ms. Gill’s Barber interpretations that sounded unlike any others that this listener has heard, and presumably some of those may be attributable to studies with Mr. Browning. One of the aspects of Ms. Gill’s playing that stood out was her penchant for demarcating phrases with longer than usual breaths. There was never the sense one hears from many players today of a metronome hiding in the wings. Then again, while a flexible, human sense of rhythm is important and dear to this reviewer’s heart, there were also moments in the concert when long breaths of demarcation struck this listener as possibly excessive. In the Ballade which came next for instance, though Barber does mark a comma sign in the opening phrases and in the return later, a lot of extra stretching threatens to turn 6/8 time into 7/8 time. Curiously, right before the allargando (in both beginning and return), the reverse happened, with rhythms feeling rather compressed. Such moments were thought-provoking, as they seemed fully the pianist’s intention, though they did surprise a listener accustomed to straighter renditions.
Barber’s greatest solo piano work, his Sonata Op. 26 (1949), is a powerful way to end a program, and Ms. Gill’s audience was not disappointed. There is a distinguished history of great performances of this piece, and the pianists topping the list include (among others) Vladimir Horowitz, John Browning, and Naumburg Award winner Howard Aibel (who happens to be the Founder and President of New York Concert Review, but whose stunning performance requires special mention here regardless); there is always room, naturally, for many more recordings of such masterpieces. Based on glimmers from Sunday’s performance, Ms. Gill’s interpretation seems destined to bring new angles and new touches of poetry to the mix. Her Adagio movement captured well the mournfulness of its mesto marking, and her finale had just the right ferocity in the coda. One looks forward very much to hearing it on disc, and if the recording projects the music’s power as well as she did in the heat of the moment – with no editing capabilities and many distractions – it promises to be a solid addition to the Barber discography. Brava!
A grateful audience gave a final standing ovation and was rewarded with an encore of Piazzolla’s Libertango, with Mr. Salazar joining again on violin. One looks forward to hearing Ms. Gill – and Mr. Salazar – again.
