Piano Passions: Robert Taub’s recital in Plymouth

United KingdomUnited Kingdom Piano Passions: Robert Taub (piano). Levinsky Hall, University of Plymouth, 14.10.2023. (PRB)

Robert Taub © Philip R Buttall

Ludwig van Beethoven – Sonata in E major, Op.109
Maurice Ravel Gaspard de la Nuit
Frédéric Chopin – Étude in C sharp minor, Op.25 No.6; Étude in C minor, Op.25 No.12, ‘Ocean’; Nocturne in D flat major, Op.27 No.2; Ballade in G minor, Op.23
Arnold Schoenberg Klavierstück, Op.33a
Franz LisztMephisto Waltz No.1, ‘Dance in the Village Inn’

A year minus a day ago, American concert-pianist and academic Robert Taub gave the inaugural recital to mark the metamorphosis of former Lecture Theatre One into Levinsky Hall at the University of Plymouth. Taub has been the Music Director of The Arts Institute since 2018.

That event will hold a unique position in the University annals. It marked a move from the smaller Sherwell Centre – the site of much on-campus professional music-making over many years – to a larger, more portentous venue. It also gave a new home to the Steinway Model C grand, an almost perfect vehicle for Taub’s programme of Beethoven, Schumann and Chopin. And there was a bomb hoax; see my review for the details. I am relieved to report that tonight’s anniversary recital was threat-free.

The inaugural recital was named Romantic Piano. Piano Passions, this year’s title, marks a seamless transition, with the emphasis still very much on music from the Romantic Era, when the grand piano as we know it today was really in its heyday.

Any concert in The Arts Institute’s Musica Viva series has a bonus: a half-hour pre-concert talk with the evening’s performers, which Dr Taub hosts. At first, there had been no sound reinforcement, so today’s hand-held radio microphone meant progress, but is it not easy to hold it while illustrating a point at the piano. I am sure the University coffers can afford more: maybe three remote clip-on lapel mikes for next month’s Duo Recital, so that we can hear everything. Even so, the talk was helpful and informative, and the programme notes – some twenty-four pages – are an erudite document one can dip into at any time.

Unimpeded by unwanted interruptions, Robert Taub began his recital with the Vivace from Beethoven’s Sonata Op.109. Unlike the Pathétique, last year’s choice, or the Hammerklavier Sonata, there is no sense of grandeur, no inbuilt opportunity to grab the attention with a dramatic gesture. No matter. Within the first few bars of limpid playfulness, Taub quickly showed why he is an acclaimed performer. He has followed two paths as his long career continues to flourish. As a concert pianist, he has recorded all thirty-two Beethoven sonatas, a mammoth task by anyone’s reckoning. He has also produced his own playing edition of the set, and published Playing the Beethoven Piano Sonatas (Hal Leonard, 2003). The wealth of knowledge, insight and performance practice therein may have somewhat diminished the value of some older tomes and editions by revered Beethoven scholars and pianists.

But it is the interpretation, conception and treatment of each individual sonata that puts Taub in a class of his own. It would not be too hard, for example, to give a relatively mediocre performance of the Appassionata, and get away with a decent round of applause. Beethoven’s writing just about ensures that, what with its obvious immediate appeal to the senses. After all, he was wont to say: ‘to play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable!’ Today, there was fire and passion in the second movement, but for me the real class act was how Robert Taub shaped the simple beauty, extreme legato and cantabile at the start. It was even more so in the conclusion of the finale – no opportunities for bravura, merely a peaceful reprise of the variation theme (rather as Bach did in Goldberg Variations).

One may ask: what is the most difficult piano solo ever written? This is a very subjective question, but one work nearly always appears at the top of any list. Maurice Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit from 1908, three pieces at just over twenty-three minutes in total, was inspired by Aloysius Bertrand’s poem in his 1836 collection Gaspard de la Nuit – Fantaisies à la manière de Rembrandt et de Callot.

Ravel’s work is essentially a three-movement sonata: an opening cast in classical sonata design, a ternary-form slow movement, and a tempestuous rondo. But he achieved here what he himself described as ‘a devil in coming’, with almost inhuman demands on any pianist brave enough to include it in a recital programme. A recording may arise from many studio takes edited to be clinically faithful to the score, but that shows no sense of the trials and tribulations of a live performance. In accordance with Beethoven’s sentiment, Taub’s performance conveyed the struggle and ultimate excitement in a tremendous demonstration of virtuosity at the highest level.

I wrote above that the Steinway Model C was the almost perfect vehicle for last year’s programme, in terms of performer and instrument. A lot of money had been spent during the transition from Lecture Theatre One to Levinsky Hall. The expensive acoustic panels on stage are certainly proving more effective, with feedback from each subsequent event. But whatever they achieve in sound reinforcement and envelope shaping, they will be unable to transform a Model C into a full-size concert grand piano.

I certainly do not want to be a party-pooper. We heard how Taub’s meticulous work at the keyboard produced lavish washes of exotic colour, many layers and textures, enormous dynamic range, sheer digital dexterity, and plain raw energy. Still, at times one simply felt that the slightly smaller instrument literally had nothing more in the tank. The expert TLC during the interval, with a quick re-tune, was important but could not really address the basic fact that, in this particular situation, size does matter.

Taub began the second half of his recital with a selection of works by Frédéric Chopin, another composer close to his heart. One might say that the slow-moving, highly expressive Étude Op.25 No.6 is not a ‘study’ in the sense that the rapid, virtuosic Ocean Étude Op.25 No.12 appears to be, with virtually continuous arpeggios in semiquavers set in a fast two-in-a-bar tempo. But No.6 is a study, focused on lyricism in the pianist’s left hand in the tenor range of the keyboard, sometimes heard in duet with the top line. While Taub is never short on technical prowess when needed, he excels in dreamy textures where a well-judged rubato and cantabile touch are the exact prerequisites at a leisurely tempo. In fact, after the momentary Ocean switch to the world of the virtuoso, Taub returned to familiar territory with an exquisite reading of the much-loved Nocturne Op.27 No.2. For me, it was one of the concert’s highlights, despite its status as something of a ‘miniature’.

Taub chose a war-horse to conclude his Chopin section. Ballade Op.23 is known among pianists for the difficulty of its final few pages, the coda. It is rather like canoeing on calm water but knowing that dangerous rapids await just around the corner. This challenging passage suffers when the pianist chooses to blur the edges with an indiscriminate use of the sustaining pedal, thus losing precision and overall clarity. In Taub’s performance, nothing was covered up or blurred over – there was absolutely no reason to do so.

After the lushness and patent beauty of Chopin, Arnold Schoenberg’s Klavierstück Op.33a from 1929 was a fine palate cleanser before the recital’s closing work. At a mere two-and-a-half minutes, it was his first completely twelve-tone composition – and the only item in Taub’s programme with a score on view, presumably as an aide-mémoire.

Rather like a bit of light cheese before more sips at a wine tasting, Schoenberg’s little offering worked – as we repaired to the hustle and bustle of the village inn, where a wedding feast is in progress. Liszt’s first Mephisto Waltz from 1859 virtually sums up, in eleven minutes, all that we heard earlier, from dramatic high spirits to yearning soul-searching, where a dazzling virtuosity and a vivid programmatic element are the crucial elements of music from the Romantic era.

Robert Taub concludes by saying that his Mephisto Waltz reveals Liszt as ‘a most extraordinary pianist and composer’. After such a superb recital, it would seem perfectly legitimate to add his name to the former category. And it was a lovely touch to finish this barnstorming recital with an arrangement of Busoni’s transcription of the ethereal Adagio from Bach’s organ Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C BWV564, by way of a generous encore.

Philip R Buttall

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