Tag Archives: jon kimura parker

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Jon Kimura Parker Takes on Mussorgsky, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev & Stravinsky

Jon Kimura Parker, pianist

Put Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition on any piano recital program and you know it’s a big piece. Add some Rachmaninoff to that—well, he’s known for lavishly harmonized pieces with lots of notes. What about a Prokofiev sonata as well? A really fast and tricky one? This is already a tough program for the pianist.

But, Wednesday night on the UW President’s Piano Series, Jon Kimura Parker capped it by playing all these works and including his own transcription for one person of Stravinsky’s complicated orchestral work, The Rite of Spring. The evening was an awesome physical feat for any performer, but at the very end, Parker’s fingers were as nimble, as accurate, his touch as relaxed, his playing as clean and rhymic as it all had been at the start. And after it, he played an encore, a quiet, rippling Rachmaninoff prelude.

Prokofiev’s dynamic Sonata No. 3 in A Minor, which changes moods continually in its packed eight minutes, was just a well-played curtainraiser for The Rite of Spring.

I confess to having had misgivings about what The Rite would sound like on the piano. What about all the changes in instrumental timbre, the emphasis and the meaning of using one instrument over another that Stravinsky built into it?

Stravinsky had written a piano four-hands version for use in ballet rehearsals in 1913, but left out many of the colorful details. Parker had discovered this in college, he told the audience, persuaded friends to play it with him, and tried to add in the left-out bits. Eventually his friends said, in effect, Do it yourself, and in 2004, he did, working out the logistics of putting an entire orchestral score into ten fingers, including cross rhythms and dynamics in different fingers. At times, he said, it would have been useful to have seven or eight hands. He managed amazingly with two.

I ate my misgivings as I listened to his performance. Yes, the eerie sound of the high bassoon wasn’t there, but instead what we heard were all sorts of inner details of harmony that often get obscured in the sound and propulsion of the orchestra performance.

Parker rarely pounds the piano, only when the music demands it, and even then it is still music, not key-bashing. It was a riveting experience to watch him play this familiar work and what he did with those ten fingers as the work bloomed under them into its tale of spring rising and human sacrifice. He conjured up bell-like sounds, savage sounds, peace or spikes or agitation and a multitude of rhythmic changes. It never sounded as though it was hard to do as he transcended the difficulties and created a musical experience. At times when there was a pause in the music—once long enough for him to wipe the sweat off his face with a red handkerchief—not a sound emanated from the audience.

In intermission, I said to a colleague, I’m exhausted for him. She agreed and said she expected Parker was soaking his hands in cold water at that moment.while I thought he must be doing it lying down because, after intermission, the rest of the program was almost as challenging.

He began with Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in G Minor: thoughtful, crisp and clean becoming dreamy and smooth and back again. Then, as with The Rite, he talked a bit to the audience about Pictures at an Exhibition. In contrast to The Rite, Mussorgsky intended this solely for piano, and it was orchestrated by several renowned composers after.

In this second extremely familiar work, Parker showed no fatigue as he painted in music the pictures at his friend Hartmann’s exhibition. He brought out the children’s shrill voices, the chicks’ little beaks tapping their shells, the argumentative discussion between the two Polish Jews, the gloom of the Catacombs, the weirdness of Baba Yaga’s hut and the majesty of the Great Gate of Kiev, all joined with the everchanging Promenade.

It was another enthralling performance and at the end, Parker’s playing was as precise and clean as at the start. Only a couple of times did I wonder if he had blurred a note. Parker, now 53, is still at the height of his powers, a consummate musicians’ musician who appeals equally to audiences. This was an extraordinary concert, one to remember and savor. And to savor it further, you can find his transcription of The Rite recorded by him this year, in honor of the work’s centenary.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Catching a Stellar “Trout” at the Summer Chamber Music Festival

Jon Kimura Parker

The piano has always been a part of Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Summer Festival (through July 29; tickets) and in both Monday and Tuesday’s programs this week, every work has included it. This may be in part because two well-known Canadian pianists are performing, Marc-André Hamelin and Jon Kimura Parker. Hamelin is a newcomer to the festival. Parker is returning after an absence of several years.

The piano line up this week also includes Jeewon Park, here with her husband, cellist Edward Arron, and the two gave the pre-concert recital of Rachmaninov’s Sonata in G Minor. Composed in 1900, Arron described it as a romantic refutation of those who had decided all melody had already been written and were heading in different musical directions.

Romantic it certainly is, and in Arron’s hands it was almost a love letter to his wife, his playing was so expressive, so warm, so rich, so tender. Throughout the work his cello sang and soared perfectly together and in balance with the piano part. Park for her part stayed easily on top of the busy piano role, with long lyrical phrases and many beautiful moments, though when the music required fast fortes, her hands seemed to lose their flexibility and became more rigid, detracting from the phrase-shaping.

The same happened in the first work of the concert itself, Mozart’s Sonata in A Major, K. 305, for violin and piano which she performed with violinist Andrew Wan. This was rather heavy-handed Mozart. I’d have liked it lighter with more elegant restraint. Wan plays a 1744 Bergonzi instrument from a couple of decades before the sonata was written, but he didn’t allow the instrument to sing, constraining its sound rather than releasing it to bloom.

Fauré’s Piano Quartet No. 2 in G Minor departs from his often subtle style, being forceful, almost violent at times except for the calmly beautiful adagio. Played by violinist and Society artistic director James Ehnes, violist David Harding, cellist Arron, and pianist Hamelin, it could be wondered if in 1921 Fauré is writing a response to his thoughts on the first World War. The players gave it intense energy and a full sound, Hamelin nearly overwhelming the strings several times with the power of his part. Fauré gives the viola many opening phrases so that Harding’s fine tone could be heard easily. The swirling tempest that is the last movement turns into a fast flow of inexorable forward motion with eddies, to which the musicians gave full rein.

Given the importance of the double bass in Schubert’s Quintet for Piano and Strings, the “Trout,” it’s surprising how few chamber works include it. It anchors the entire work’s carefree lightness, a state which embodied the performance given by violinist Augustin Hadelich, violist Erin Keefe, cellist Bion Tsang, bass Jordan Anderson, and pianist Parker. It’s impossible to be bored with this entrancing and familiar piece of music, which contains a profusion of inspired moments one after another. The five performers kept the joy, exuberance and vitality to the fore without ever allowing the music to bog down in weight. It was a stellar performance, enthusiastically appreciated by the capacity audience at Nordstrom Recital Hall.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Summer Festival Opens Fortissimo

This July sees the first year of artistic director James Ehnes’s stamp on the programming and artists presented at Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Summer Festival (running through July 29; tickets). The festival is in its 31st season, and Ehnes has been playing violin here for some 15 years: His choices show a continuity which will reassure audience, but also fresh ideas which will enliven the festival.

Among these has been bringing at least one work to each performance never played at the festival before—not easy when one remembers there have been between 12 and 20 concerts in each of 30 years, each with three or four works played, though many have been repeated more than once.

Opening night Monday at Nordstrom Recital Hall included the rarely-performed Variations for Violin, Cello and Piano, Op. 44, by Beethoven. He sketched it out in 1792, the year he reached 22 and was studying—not always fruitfully—with Haydn, but didn’t publish it for years after.

Although Beethoven had written some well-received works prior to this, the Variations seem more a student work, heavily leaning towards the piano part, played Monday by Jeewon Park. When each instrument has its limelight, the other two are not much more than accompaniment. Nevertheless, the work has its charm, and much of the performance, by Park, violinist Erin Keefe, and cellist Edward Aaron, gave it shape and nuance particularly in the lighter variations, though the musicians tended to be overly forceful when the music called for a forte.

Those who attended the free pre-concert recital had the delight of hearing pianist Marc-André Hamelin give a superb performance of two of his own works: Theme and Variations (Cathy’s Variations) and Variations on a Theme of Paganini—this last a spinoff, or perhaps I should say a takeoff, on other famous Variations on the same theme.

So often, great pianists are not great composers, but Hamelin, definitely a great pianist, has the depth and the imagination and the knowledge to write music which has the components to make it last. Cathy’s Variations, written for his fiancée about five years ago has a gentle flowing melody for a theme, largely in classical-romantic style and tonality, with variations which build and extend and embroider.

My neighbor turned to me afterward, commenting: “After that, I feel I know Cathy,” which seemed an appropriate compliment to the music. His brilliant Paganini Variations were clearly recognizable and impishly distorted, an excellent choice for this musically educated audience which caught all the insertions and nuances and chuckled often.

Ehnes himself with pianist Jon Kimura Parker performed Bartok’s Sonata No. 1 for violin and piano, the heart and soul of the ensuing concert. It’s a work which takes complete attention for the listener to absorb, and judging by the silence between movements, it received that. It also takes thorough understanding by the musicians in order to put it across, and that too it had. This was a stellar performance of a work written in the early 1920s which sounds as fresh and contemporary today, 90 years later, as it must have when written.

Brahms’ Quintet for Piano and Strings, Op. 34, which concluded the concert, received an intense, vigorous, sometimes even aggressive performance which began startlingly loud and continued that way. While there were many moments of extreme beauty and exquisite soft playing, and a synchronization of bowing between the two violins, Andrew Wan and Augustin Hadelich, which was a marvel to hear and behold, the performance was marred by too much forcing at every forte moment, turning each into an unneccessary quadruple forte.

Strings in Brahms’ time were all gut. Had they played this way in the 1860s when this was composed, strings would have snapped right and left during the performance. The lower registers of cellist Bion Tsang and violist David Harding were less noticeable in this regard, but Hamelin at the piano sounded equally overloud.

Maybe the performance would have sounded less pushed in a large concert hall, but this is chamber music, and Nordstrom holds only 500-plus seats. The idea of using performance practice—an approach to performing music in the context of its time—not only in Baroque music but in all music up to the present day, has been taking hold in many unexpected places, even in one of the last hold outs, the orchestra. Surely it is not too much to hope that chamber music players, particularly those of the caliber always present at Seattle Chamber Music Society’s concerts, could pay attention to this?