New Zealand Various: Stephen De Pledge (piano). Old Library, Whangarei, New Zealand, 28.7.2024. (PSe)
Bach/Hess – Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring
Haydn – Variations in F minor, Hob. XVII:6
R. Schumann – Kinderszenen, Op.15
Messiaen – Prelude ‘Chant d’Extase dans un Paysage Triste’
Debussy – Prelude ‘Ce qu’a Vu le Vent d’Ouest’
Eve de Castro-Robinson – Prelude ‘This Liquid Drift of Light’
Chopin – Prelude, Op.28 No.5 ‘Raindrop’
Rachmaninov – Prelude, Op.23 No.2
Improvisation; (attacca) Falla – Ritual Fire Dance
Stephen De Pledge is showing signs of becoming something of a regular attraction at Whangarei Music Society: during my time here, he has performed in 2012 (with Martin Rummel), 2013 (with Antipodes String Trio), 2014 (solo), followed by a curiously large gap until 2021 (solo). That last recital comprised a selection of his ‘favourite things’. You may be surprised to hear that this present recital offers more of the same, which he described as ‘complete luxury for me’.
That is well and good, but is this symptomatic of his fount of ideas running dry? Not at all, for two good reasons. Firstly, Stephen is one of those whose favourite music is often the music he is playing at the time, so there is plenty of it. Secondly, the bulk of this batch explores something particular. Thus, this review not only picks up where the last one (2021) left off, but also has to treat with a ‘theme’ in the recital’s second half.
Stephen started with a piece that is probably on many folks’ ‘favourites’ list, the so-called Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring by Bach, in Myra Hess’s 1926 piano arrangement. The arpeggiated chords ever-so-slightly elevated my eyebrows: was this a ‘romantic’ touch, or an instance of pre-HIP authenticity? No matter: Stephen played it at a nicely flowing pace, with a firm tread and a degree of nobility leavened by a smidgen of rubato – and all in the best possible taste!
Rather more challenging was Haydn’s Variations in F minor. It has been suggested that this is a memorial to Maria Anna von Genzinger. Although it seems this fine lady regarded him merely as a firm friend, Stephen argued forcefully that Haydn, albeit covertly, was heels over head in love with her, his latter-day muse. Indeed, Haydn all-but-banished his customary lively wit and sparkling elegance from this double-variations movement, whilst Stephen’s performance – without actually embellishing the score – elicited a jagged crescendo of wracked anguish (foreshadowing elements of the Beethoven to come), which rendered the fading conclusion heartrendingly poignant.
The first half ended with Robert Schumann’s Kinderszenen, a work he had played for us in 2014. Happily, his view hasn’t changed, so that what I said then applies equally to now: ‘I am assured, by those who know about these things, that Schumann’s affectionate take on the child’s imaginative world makes few demands technically; it’s obvious even to me that it nevertheless requires prodigious expressive virtuosity. Rarely have I heard Kinderszenen’s compact vignettes so deftly delineated. Stephen had scrupulously weighed every least detail against the whole, and the result was more mesmerisingly magical than most that I’ve come across.’
After the interval came the ‘theme’. Over the years the ‘definition’ of a prelude, Stephen said, has changed drastically. Originally it had been simply an opportunity for a performer to improvise, to give the audience a taste of things to come; and over the course of a century or two had gradually evolved, ultimately to become a piece, not necessarily improvisational, that gave the audience a ‘taste of something’. In this sense, I suppose that Kinderszenen can be regarded as a whole suite of preludes. Stephen’s specific examples were by Messiaen, Debussy, Castro-Robinson, Chopin and Rachmaninov, which gave him an excuse (not that he needed one!) to further exercise his talent for expressivity.
In his ‘Chant d’Extase dans un Paysage Triste’ Messiaen represented a sad landscape through a slow, solemn ‘march’, threaded by an ecstatic song brimming with angular twiddles; the whole infused by the composer’s characteristic, perfumed harmonic harmony. Stephen had a good feel for Messiaen’s idiom, weaving these elements into a magical soundscape.
It was a neat idea to follow that with Debussy, who has often been regarded as the last word in pianistic colour. If Messiaen has trumped Debussy’s ace, hearing the latter’s ‘What the West Wind Saw’ reminded us that Debussy’s soundscapes nevertheless, in their own way, remain unique. Stephen, deftly running the notes into one another, very effectively mimicked the sound of the wind – and produced some truly terrific climaxes: what the wind saw was something momentous!
Kiwi composer Eve de Castro-Robinson’s 2004 prelude takes its title from Denys Trussel’s poem Spring Drift Kawhia, in the line, ‘Now hills half-stripped of gods rim this liquid drift of light, and the sea-eye flashes mosaic beneath a nest of cliffs’. The start is almost groping in darkness, the music gradually coalescing, growing, becoming exceedingly spiky, its very high notes vividly contrasting a chordal bassline; all finely rendered by the evocative De Pledge.
Could we say that Chopin’s celebrated ‘Raindrop’ Prelude makes something of a companion to the preceding piece? Above a left-hand accompaniment kept very steady, Stephen phrased the line elegantly, ebbing and flowing with disarming ease. The chordal centre sounded fuller and richer, but the pianist’s rhythmic pulse never wavered, not even when the shower got rather heavy.
Although Rachmaninov’s Op.23 No.2 does not sport a guiding title, there is no doubt that ‘something’ is expressed very strongly. Stephen attacked the music molto welly, that is, with fearful vehemence – furious, violent, stormy in the extreme, and yet with not one hair out of place (except perhaps at the very end). It was vicious indeed, but also an astonishingly grand and noble outpouring.
Apparently stuck for an original introduction to his final item, Stephen resolved his problem by whipping out his cards. Someone on the front row was asked to pick three cards (for details of this mysterious procedure, see near the end of this review here), which yielded three notes. As these just happened to be the first three notes of Maria (West Side Story), he changed the order and performed an improvisation on the altered pattern. This was dark and expansive, flowing and a touch florid, and richly harmonised, ending on a moody segue into Falla’s ever-popular Ritual Fire Dance.
I must admit that to me this seemed far too fast – after all, it is a virtuoso challenge even at the proper speed – and by this he sacrificed some of the piece’s primitive, pagan quality. Nevertheless, his torrential performance was so impressive that we were just swept along willy-nilly. It is likely that the thunderous conclusion drowned out umpteen fluffs, but, being drowned out they effectively never existed anyway. Only the impact mattered – and justly earned a round of equally thunderous applause, concluding yet another thought-provoking, edifying and thoroughly entertaining recital: I drool in anticipation of his next one.
Paul Serotsky