Distinguished pianist Yefim Bronfman was in town for two days to play a recital for the Carmel Music Society at Sunset Center on Tuesday evening. Needing a place to practice the day before the recital, he came to our home and during his five-hour practice session treated us to some of the most glorious and natural sounding piano playing we had ever heard. Everything sounded easy and unforced. Even the most climactic heaven-storming moments in the Schumann Fantasie, Prokofiev’s Second Sonata and Balakirev’s “Islamey” unfurled in powerful, yet effortless, splendor. We marveled at the beauty of his sound, the elegance of his shaping of musical lines, and the seemingly inevitable quality of his musical conceptions.
However, it was a different and entirely more aggressive Yefim Bronfman who walked out on the stage of Sunset Center the following evening in front of an audience of approximately 400 people. Gone was his gorgeous sensuous sound (although it appeared briefly in quieter moments of various pieces), now replaced with a hard, steely-edged sound that distorted most of the music he performed during the evening. There were tantalizing moments of great beauty during this recital, and it was unfortunate that they were so over balanced by Bronfman’s relentless banging that produced some of the ugliest sounds ever heard from the Carmel Music Society’s Hamburg Steinway concert grand.
Some of the best moments in this concert were the lovely slow movements of Beethoven’s Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 27, No. 1, Schuman’s Fantasie in C Major, Prokofiev’s Second Sonata and also in the gorgeous Scarlatti Sonata in C Minor he offered as an encore. Although the Beethoven and Prokofiev Sonatas presented ample evidence of a first-class musical mind, his consistent overplaying ultimately robbed these works of the effectiveness of which they are capable.
The concluding work, Balakirev’s “Islamey,” has a fearsome reputation among pianists. Almost impossible to play, this work often sounds labored and awkward. Bronfman solved the technical problems magnificently, but then created a whole new set of musical problems by pounding away at the highest dynamic levels. It was a miracle that no piano strings were broken and that the piano managed to stay in tune during the entire concert – a tribute to the fine prepping of the instrument by master piano technician, Jim Christopher from San Mateo.
Two encores were performed – the lovely understated Scarlatti Sonata in C Minor, and a larger than life distorted rendition of Chopin’s “Revolutionary” Etude.
You can always tell in the first few minutes of a piano recital whether the attitude of the performer is, “I love these pieces and want to share them with you” or “I am a great virtuoso and will amaze you with my blazing technique.” With a moderate amount of self restraint, this could have been a great recital. We would all do well to heed the words of Artur Schnabel, “As performers, we are tour guides and should never get in the way of the view.”
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