So far, it’s been a terrific season for great piano music – thanks to the College of Charleston’s reliable International Piano Series: the pet project of Artist-in-Residence Enrique Graf. The overall excellence of the artists he’s brought us over the years has spoiled us rotten, often attracting bigger crowds at the Sottile Theatre than most comparable big-city piano recitals can claim.
Last Tuesday’s event treated us to the artistry of Paolo André Gualdi, one of Graf’s own former students. This young virtuoso has racked up an enviable record of international competition wins – and his performance here (in an incredibly demanding program) showed us why.
He got going with one of the real plums among Ludwig van Beethoven’s lofty cycle of thirty-two piano sonatas: the “Waldstein.” Named for (and dedicated to) one of Beethoven’s aristocratic patrons, it’s one of the composer’s noblest and most memorable keyboard numbers – and it takes an exceptional pianist to do it justice.
Gualdi offered a more lyrical approach to this marvelous piece than we usually hear, especially in the first movement – downplaying some of the inherent tension and drama that many pianists exploit to the fullest. Still, it was a refreshing change, providing nuances of tone and touch that most of us hadn’t heard before. Aside from a few minor descending arpeggio flaws in the first movement, his flying fingers coped beautifully with the work’s considerable technical demands.
Then we got a slam-bang rendition of Hungarian Master Bela Bartok’s thorny Sonata – a fearfully difficult piece that the composer (also a famous pianist) wrote for his own concert use. It’s full of the bumptious, often manic folk-themes that Bartok himself collected early in life – and its polytonal harmonics often make for profuse dissonance. Gualdi pounded it out with astounding skill and energy. It may not have been the evening’s hit, but the modern music fans among us were truly thrilled to hear it.
After intermission came a poetic and often dizzying account of the second of Hungarian virtuoso Franz Liszt’s Two Legends for piano: St. Francis of Paola walking on the waters. This amazing piece recounts the tale of the saint using his cloak and staff as a makeshift sailing device to cross a stretch of open water, arriving at the far shore ahead of the ferry he couldn’t afford passage on. A rippling motif recalled restless waves, soon growing into heavy seas that threaten disaster. I wonder if I’ve ever heard smoother, more assured octave work as the going got rough.
Pianists shy away in droves from Maurice Ravel’s impressionist masterpiece Gaspard de la Nuit: a staggeringly difficult item that redefined the limits of modern piano virtuosity. But Gualdi nailed it, bearing out Graf’s reputation as a teacher who can work wonders with any emerging young pianist’s technique.
Be sure to catch the series’ final installment this season, starring Jorge Luis Prats – perhaps Cuba’s finest pianist. He’s played here before, and I’m here to tell you he’ll be worth the ticket.
