ANAM
South Melbourne Town Hall
South Melbourne Town Hall
Monday 1 November 2015
RAVEL, Gaspard de la nuit
Adam McMillan
“A great musician is a great gastronome”, some bloke may
have said about Rossini. The evidence included Rossini’s great corporation. There
are exceptions. Adam McMcMillan, evidently, is an exceptional musician.
Ravel wrote some incredibly difficult music. Whether or not
a pianist gets it technically is pretty obvious.
Adam did.
Much more subtly, whether or not a pianist gets it musically
is a matter of emotional judgement.
Adam did.
Gaspard de la nuit of
1908 is instantly recognisable as Ravel and the first of the three poèmes, Ondine is set in constantly rippling water, writing that suggests Ravel
understood chaos theory.
To play Gaspard –
particularly to an educated, experienced audience (about 100 retirees and
fellow students) – suggests supreme confidence, high-order foolishness or
technical and musical competence of an extraordinary order. At about the one-minute
mark, I’d opted for the technical bit. At about the three-minute mark I’d
firmly decided on the musical bit too because Adam had answered my fundamental
question about this piece, Was he finding the images and painting them for me?
Like the ripples in Ondine’s water that are nothing but the
location of water molecules in three dimensions, Ravel’s – and Adam’s – music are
nothing more than soundwaves in time. Neither the ripples nor the music exist until
I stand back and see (or hear) it in perspective. The magic of Adam’s
performance was that underneath the chaos of the ripples he found the melodic
line (Ondine?). Fiendish stuff to play. Even more difficult to make work.
 |
| Gaspard de la Nuit, Ondine last page. Note the ppp |
But as is the way of consummate musicians, apart from the
cascades of notes that encompassed the entire range of the Steinway, Adam never
let it sound like hard work.
The B-flat octave ostinato tolls aggravatingly throughout Le Gibet – admittedly much more
aggravatingly to the poor blighter swaying in the breeze from the gallows. The
rich backdrop of Ravel’s minor chords, often exhilarating in his work, only
make the tolling worse. More technical brilliance; more superb musicianship.
 |
| Gaspard de la Nuit, Le Gibet |
The dwarf, Scarbo,
emerged, laughed, taunted, threatened. On a wickedness scale of one to ten, he
represented a score of 13. Adam found his malevolence in bucket loads in Ravel’s
wonderful highly chromatic score.
 |
| Gaspard de la Nuit, Scarbo |
Has an ANAM end-of-year recital ever generated a standing
ovation? This got pretty damn close.
RACHMANINOV, Suite no. 2 for two
pianos in C minor op. 17
Adam McMillan
Laurence Matheson
If Ravel is an impressionist – even though he rejected the
description – this piece is pure Rachmaninov-romanticism. There are hints of
the two great piano concertos – Two and Three – every few minutes. It has “soaring
melodies building to a dramatic climax” (Adam) that brand this music as
gut-grabbing Rachmaninov. And the notes, the number of notes. The two pianists
had 20 cm fingers and six or seven on each hand.
But it wasn’t difficult; It wasn’t hard work – or it didn’t
seem so. It was cascades of gorgeous music that left a gent in front of me grinning
with delight as he applauded.
Critical to the success of this performance – apart from the
technical wizardry – was the synergy of two pianists controlling the rubatos (rubati?)
by gut; clearly they couldn’t see each other’s hands.
Two superb pianists, one superlative composition; one
splendid recital. Bravo, gentlemen!
