Vladimir Feltsman
Mozart, in the Delicate Voice of Fortepiano
Complete sonatas on fortepiano
New York Times September 30, 2006
Allan Kozinn for the New York Times
Whatever else might be said of Vladimir Feltsman, he has become a master at reinventing himself.
When he arrived in New York from Moscow in 1987, he was promoted as a Russian Romantic firebrand, yet his debut recital consisted of works by Schubert, Schumann and Messiaen. Five years later, he was devoting himself to Bach, offering expressively shaped and thoughtfully ornamented performances on a modern piano. Then it was back to the standard repertory — Haydn, Beethoven, Mussorgsky — in the big-toned, blockbuster style that everyone expected in the first place.
Now Mr. Feltsman is on to something new — or old, depending on how you look at it. As his contribution to the Mozart anniversary year, he commissioned the keyboard builder Paul McNulty to construct a fortepiano modeled after an Anton Walter instrument from Mozart’s time. And he is using it to play all the Mozart sonatas and a handful of fantasias and other works in five concerts at the New School and the Mannes College of Music.
At the opening concert, on Wednesday night in Tishman Hall at the New School, Mr. Feltsman played five of the six sonatas Mozart wrote on a visit to Munich in 1775, when he was 19. These works (K. 279 through 283) aren’t just youthful; they bubble over with playful, unabashedly showy touches — melodies bejeweled with grace notes, dialogues between flighty top lines and rumbling basses, and speed-demon finales — meant to demonstrate the composer-pianist’s invention and wit.
This was especially true in the E major Sonata (K. 282), structurally the oddest in the set, with its opening adagio instead of the more typical sonata-form allegro, and its central menuetto. It probably raised eyebrows in Mozart’s day. The creamy timbre of the modern piano can dull the edges. Mr. Feltsman’s reading on the fortepiano, with its sometimes gritty, sometimes slightly metallic sound, preserved the music’s oddity and surprise, and amplified its fleetness.
He showed the other side of the coin as well, giving the melody lines of the slow movements a graceful, songlike quality and proving along the way that if the fortepiano’s dynamic range is smaller than the modern piano’s, it is enough to give a line both shape and nuance. You can safely set aside concerns about the delicate voice of the fortepiano. In the last row at Tishman Hall, Mr. Feltsman’s sound was robust and finely detailed, and the bass octaves in the Sonata in G (K. 283), though not quite Lisztian, packed a hefty punch.
Mr. Feltsman’s series continues at the Mannes College of Music (150 West 85th Street, Manhattan) on Saturday, with other installments at Mannes on Tuesday and Oct. 10, and a final concert at the New School (66 West 12th Street, Greenwich Village) on Oct. 12. (212) 229-5488.
C.B.