14 Sep 2018

Review: Christopher's Classics - Richard Mapp

From Upbeat, 12:51 pm on 14 September 2018

Last night, on The Piano’s excellent Steinway, Richard Mapp gave us a very individual and thought-provoking recital.

It wasn’t so much the repertoire, which included a couple of short pieces by Kenneth Young and Olivier Messiaen among more standard fare by Bach, Schubert, Chopin and Brahms, but more about Mapp’s very individual keyboard manner.

Pianist Richard Mapp

Pianist Richard Mapp Photo: Chamber Music New Zealand

Right from the first work of the evening, Bach’s C-sharp Minor prelude and Fugue (Book 1), there was a certain improvisatory quality to the playing that was quite striking. While Richard Mapp’s physical and facial expression was almost bland, his fingers seemed to explore nuances of the music as if finding its delights for the first time, or even seeming to make them up as he played.

Here a slight tenuto as if to savour a special discovery, there a momentary highlighting of an inner voice in the texture. I couldn’t help wondering if every detail was the same on every night of the pianist’s tour, but last night a heightened degree of spontaneity and sense of wonder were very present indeed.

Then followed the fifth piece from Kenneth Young’s 2002 Five Pieces for Piano, which proved an enjoyable and engaging piece reminding me how much I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve heard by this Christchurch-born composer; surely undervalued as one of New Zealand’s most consistently impressive composers.

Here the movement chosen by the pianist was full of inventive harmonic ideas and a central ‘furioso’ full of vitality and fascinating textures.

The Piano

The Piano Photo: Supplied

Then to Schubert’s sublime Three Piano Pieces (D.946) and that same sense of improvisation in Mapp’s playing struck me even more.

The last time I heard these pieces live was almost exactly seven years ago when Michael Houstoun gave us a much more strictly ‘classical’ performance, a few months after the earthquakes, in a tent in Hagley Park.

But Richard Mapp’s almost wayward treatment of the first theme of the first piece made me listen freshly to a much-loved work.

That first theme had such an ebb and flow (not quite what I’d call rubato) to the phrasing that it almost sounded nonchalant.

And then, the transition to the second subject prepared the most magical emergence of that theme and made it sound more heart-rendingly expressive than I’ve ever heard.

And, while I’d made a special effort to get the ideal seat to watch the pianist’s profile and finger-work, here I just closed my eyes and let the music carry me away.

Franz Schubert

Franz Schubert, about 1827 Photo: Franz Eybl, Public Domain

The second of these pieces (my favourite) was even more expressive, to the extent that the pianist’s visual restraint belied a performance of exquisite poetry.

I can’t help making a comparison at this point with Vladimir Horowitz; not that I’m making (or not making) any sort of quality judgement in saying that Richard Mapp’s playing reminded me of the outwardly underplayed and inwardly intensely passionate style of the great Russian-American.

And, if Horowitz’s Carnegie Hall audiences unfailingly raised the roof in their approbation, we, in Christchurch, were just as appreciative of Richard Mapp’s playing in our own, less overt, response.

But the way Horowitz would toss off the most finger-crippling complexities with seeming ease and nonchalance, and also a sense of improvisation (as indeed there sometimes was), was very evident in last night’s performances.

Not that any of the works on this programme featured in Horowitz recitals; most of the composers, yes, but these particular works, not at all as far as I know.

Vladimir Horowitz

Vladimir Horowitz Photo: wikicommons

The second part of Mapp’s recital duplicated the structure of the first.

Two shorter individual works, followed by a longer collection of pieces by one of the master composers of the piano repertoire.

Chopin’s Nocturne in C Minor continued the same improvisatory trends as the earlier part of the recital, with the additional advantage of hearing a single Chopin miniature masterpiece in isolation.

Sometimes, in a collection of Nocturnes, or even other Chopin works, these gems can lose their individuality, but here every nuance of Chopin’s inspiration was exposed fully in a performance that seemed to search for any, as yet, hidden details.

Fryderyk Chopin

Fryderyk Chopin Photo: Maria Wodzińska, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Messiaen’s Première Communion de la Vierge from Vingts Regards de l’Enfant Jesus has become a central part of twentieth century piano repertoire, but I am not at all familiar with this composer’s piano music.

It was all new to me except for Messiaen’s very identifiable and characteristic harmonies, familiar from his orchestral and other music. But the sonorities that both he and the player drew from the piano were startling in their originality, and the opulent beauty of the movement (No. 11 of the twenty) made me determined to explore this repertoire further.

To end the recital, Mapp chose Brahms’ Seven Fantasies, Op. 116. If, perhaps, less familiar than some of the other piano pieces (Op. 117-119) from Brahms’ final years, the first two in the group, especially, certainly hit the mark with both Brahms and the pianist seeming to take delight in finding new and exquisite moments of melodic, harmonic and rhythmic beauty.

The enthusiastic response from the audience brought an encore of Chopin’s technically undemanding Waltz in A-flat.

Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms Photo: Public Domain

Technically undemanding it may be, but Mapp used it to take his exploratory approach to such extremes that it was almost like hearing the composer himself creating the piece.

The con anima marking of the second theme was almost ignored in order to highlight the subtleties of the harmonic invention.

And the final statement of the main theme ended with such an emphasis of the D-flat harmony clash against the D-natural in the melody that I’ve found myself playing through the piece this morning, trying to recapture the new surprises that Richard Mapp revealed before he left the stage.