Saturday afternoon found me watching the silent version of The Mark of Zorro (1920), starring Douglas Fairbanks. I found it very interesting, especially with Mr. Fairbanks in the dual roles of schlub and swashbuckler. He played both of them quite well, which also added a touch of humor from time to time. Because I grew up seeing only serial versions of Zorro on television as a child, it came as a bit of a surprise to me that Zorro is unmasked at the end of the film as Don Diego Vega (the schlub)—but he still gets the girl.
While I didn’t stay very long at the Q&A afterwards, I did hear that during the rehearsals for the film, it was discovered at what height the jumps and other stunts could be safely be performed, and then the set pieces involved in the stunts were shortened by a couple of inches for the final filming, to better showcase the flair of the derring-do. Another interesting item, this one gleaned from Steve Massa’s program notes, is that United Artists was co-founded in 1919 by Mr. Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith. As always, Ben Model provided the thoroughly delightful score—and in this case, for a much longer film than the usual two or three short comedies presented by Silent Cinema Presentations, Inc.
Saturday evening found me at a new, to me, venue, Baruch Performing Arts Center. The construction was concrete block walls and ceiling, with pale wooden baffling framing the stage, and pale wooden sound panels attached to the center of the ceiling of the hall. The effect was slightly modern, without being harsh. Due to horrific traffic (I had to give up trying to get on the subway, and took a slow-as-molasses-going-uphill-in-January bus), I still got to the theater just in time. That said, I also got there before the printed programs did! so the concert was delayed by just a bit.
Now, on to the concert, performed under the auspices of The New York Piano Society. This is an organization whose members are not professional musicians; they’re talented amateurs who have “real” lives, as it were, outside of the music world. Since there were seven pianists and thirteen pieces on the program, I’ve decided not to list the pianists’ names and not to comment on every piece. But I did hear Beethoven, Brahms, and Bach, along with Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Franck, Kabalevsky, Scriabin, and Liszt, performed by a mathematician, a biostatistician, a professor of English, an M.D., a lawyer, and an accountant. So it was sort of like a smorgasbord.
First up was Beethoven’s Sonata in D Major, Op. 10, No. 3, played with a nice fluidity and a firm control of dynamics. The next piece had the same pianist accompanying Filip Pogády, a professional violinist who is the current NYPS Artist in Residence. Meditation, from Souvenir d’un lieu cher, Op. 42, by Tchaikovsky, began with a solo piano opening in a calm mood, with a lovely melody that had a touch of sadness. The violin, when it joined in, reminded me of melancholy tinged with positive sentiments. Rondo, Op. 59, by Kabalevsky, was pretty much an exercise in perpetual motion with modern, though not jarring, harmonies that were contrasted with a section that had slower rhythms, especially for the left hand. This was played by Sabina Marra, who is the NYPS 2015 Young Guest Artists Audition Winner. She played very well; she’s currently continuing intensive studies in music and academics.
Of the four Liszt pieces on the program, I liked the Concert Étude, “Waldesrauschen,” which had a uniform structure with lots of notes, yet was neither overpowering nor overbearing; Libesträume No. 3, which was very sweet and immediately recognizable (an online search will probably get you lots of hits); and, for piano and violin, Paganini-Liszt La Campanella, with its gazillion (not a technical term) notes.
Also of note and of interest was the four-movement Bach Partita No. 2 in c minor, BWV 826 for solo piano. The Sinfonia had nice two-part writing, after a chordal opening, while the Allemande that followed was relatively gentle. The Courante was more energetic, and the Capriccio finished with more clearly defined rhythms in the left hand.
So for a smorgasbord, the evening turned out quite nicely. Not everything was to my liking, but a lot of it was. And it’s good to know that “real” people are dedicated to making music.
ConcertMeister
No comments:
Post a Comment