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Recent Press Pianist's renditions fresh, lovely by Mark Stryker/Free Press Music Writer Krystian Zimerman is a deceptively challenging pianist, largely because his playing has none of the self-conscious embroidery, hyperbole or eccentricity that often accompanies iconoclasm. Zimerman - the 47-year-old Polish pianist who last appeared in metro Detroit 20 years ago and made his overdue area recital debut Saturday - belongs in the small circle of the world’s elite pianists. But he plays with such supple technique and such elegant control of sonority and pacing that the riskier elements of his music-making nearly dissolve in a monopolizing wash of beauty. The conservative program he offered Saturday furthered the illusion; Beethoven’s Sonata No. 31, Op. 110, and Chopin’s B Minor Sonata were the major works, along with the Six Klavierstucke, Op. 118, by Brahms and Chopin’s Impromptu in F-sharp, Op. 36. But make no mistake: Zimerman’s rigorous intellect subjected every familiar interpretive question to fresh analysis. Sometimes this led to unconventional ideas, like the zesty tempos in the Brahms miniatures or the many passages in the Beethoven sonata in which expressive rubato and rhythmic hesitations nearly brought the music to a standstill. Zimerman stretched phrases to their breaking points, but his inner clock never mortgaged forward momentum in favor of reverie - though there were close calls. Zimerman’s Beethoven suggested a tantalizing compromise between patrician eloquence and robust physicality. Op. 110 is the most songful of Beethoven’s late sonatas, and Zimerman underscored the first movement’s sweet lyricism. Then, using speed and exaggerated dynamics, he brought Lizstian bravura to the humorous second movement. The fugue started gently but, in another camouflaged surprise, swelled to violence. Zimerman played the repeated chords before the resurrection of the fugal theme in a drawn-out fashion that created cliff-hanger tension. In the Chopin sonata, Zimerman eschewed wet-kiss passion in favor of cultivated poetry. He delineated the inner voices of the harmonies, producing an ebb and flow of clear-eyed textures and hazy clouds of sentiment. There are certainly other ways to interpret this music, but you won’t hear it played any better. |
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