Shunta Morimoto at the Denia International Piano Festival in Bach, Chopin and Liszt

 

I don’t normally write detailed reviews of chamber music concerts. It’s not because they often aren’t memorable, it’s just that I tend to go to so many of them, it’s often hard to keep up with the writing! This lack of motivation to put pen paper is especially marked when the repertoire on offer is very much standard, comprising often performed works that frankly I have heard many times. It’s not that familiarity breeds contempt. It’s just that what does one say about another fairly standard performance of a standard work, albeit that both the work and the performance are superb? Nearly all the performances I have heard over the years are wholly competent, with one or two exceptions, but it becomes hard to say anything new about them. So what is it about a concert that featured J. S. Bach’s French Suite No. 6 BWV 817, Chopin’s Opus 28 Preludes and Liszt’s Dante Sonata that has provoked me to write? Answer: the performer and the performance. Both were outstanding.

Shunta Morimoto is a young Japanese pianist. He was 19 when he won the Concurso de Piano Gonzalo Soriano in Alicante in April 2024. The competition is organized by Ars Alta Cultural in conjunction with Conservatorio Profesional de Música, Guitarrista José Tomás and this year there were over 100 entrants, with half of them competing in level D, the section for adults, whose age rage was from 18 to 32. Shunta Morimoto, therefore, was at the younger end of the range, and he was the youngest of the finalists. I have been listening to music intently for about 60 years. But I knew from the moment Shunta Morimoto depressed a key in that room in April that he would win the competition and, furthermore, that I was about to witness something wholly special. Put simply, Shunta Morimoto is a genius.

Part of the prize for winning the Gonzalo Soriano competition was to appear in the Ars Alta Cultural concert series in Denia at the end of 2024 and that concert, part of the Denia International Piano Festival, was last night. Shunta Morimoto offered the program mentioned above and, for perhaps the first time in thousands of concerts and recitals that I have attended, I can report that not one of the 110 or so people in the audience made a single sound, apart from applause, of course, throughout the one and a half hours of music. There was no interval, but amongst the audience, silence ruled, so utterly wrapt was everyone in what they heard.

It is hard to describe in words what is so compelling about this young man’s playing. The moment you hear the music, it is obvious, but written words have to be read, not heard. Many pianists use bravura, strength and volume to impress. Many play as fast as possible. Shunta Morimoto can offer bravura, the spectacular and the speedy. But above all what he can do is communicate via the music and it is this speaking, apparently directly to an audience without the need of words that is utterly captivating, even arresting.

Every phrase of every piece he played last night was shaped, thought through to make musical sense. At times, he played so softly the music was barely audible, but every note was there, every gesture was clear, every phrase fit perfectly with the musical argument he presented. Even the silences he interspersed for effect were listened to intently by a thoroughly captivated audience.

Chopin’s Opus 28 Preludes, perhaps, was never intended to be played as a single work. But in the right hands, even a composer’s lack of vision can be straightened. I am reminded of a performance about 30 years ago when Murray McLachlan played all the Etudes of Chopin end to end, Opus 25 followed by Opus 10. He was clear that it would not the other way round. I have never forgotten that performance on a baby grand Kawai in a Brunei Hotel. Last night, Shunta Morimoto knew that the Opus 28 Preludes could be played as a single work, and he was right. He succeeded completely.

The Liszt that followed, of course, was breathtaking. In any hands, this Dante Sonata is a real monster, requiring all the skills that a pianist can possibly muster to bring it off. Not only did Shunta Morimoto succeed, but he appeared to bring a new dimension to the work by shaping the quieter sections so finely and so eloquently. Earlier in the day, I had listened to two other performances, by Paul Lewis and Alfred Brendel, so the work was already in my head. Shunta Morimoto’s rendition made me feel like I was hearing it for the first time, so surprising did I find his nuances of interpretation. It was totally recognisable, but totally new at the same time. What a performance!

After a wholly spontaneous standing ovation, he offered the Chopin Barcarole as a substantial encore. Shunta Morimoto, for sure, is a unique talent. He surely has a stellar career ahead of him, and richly deserved. Special.

Shunta Morimoto plays in Denia, 7 November 2024, 8pm, Teatro Centro Social

 

Mahler Seven by the Tonhalle Zurich under Paavo Jarvi in ADDA Alicante

A concert program that devotes 77 minutes to a single work is not commonly encountered. Yes, there are the symphonies of Mahler and Bruckner and Shostakovich, but what else would commonly occupy such a length of time? It was with some excitement that this big event was anticipated.

The bill was, without question, up to the challenge. Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra is certainly one of the world’s leading orchestras, and Paavo Järvi’s name could not be bigger in the world of conducting. This particular Mahler Symphony, number seven, is one that I last heard in live performance in a concert over fifty years ago on London’s South Bank. So even the torrential rain in Alicante that surrounded this evening could not damp the enthusiastic anticipation.

Well, did the evening live up to the expectation? Of course it did. The performance was faultless, even brilliant at times, even if it could be argued the Paavo Järvi’s tempo in the faster sections of the first movement could have been a little faster. The overall impression, however, was that the contrasted were stark but never grotesque. This is truly sophisticated music that almost constantly surprises the listener, and it must be expertly played to make sense. The Tonhalle Orchestra took every challenge in its substantial stride and in this variation-like movement, one could not even hear the joins.

Mahler 7 is a groundbreaking symphony in many ways, not least in its structure. A first movement that is alternatively fast and then reflective lasts for 22 minutes. Its loose variation form revisits the same material, but Mahler’s imagination keeps the sound fresh throughout, never in the slightest repetitive. The central section of the movement, that momentary vision of marital bliss, does eventually disintegrate to chaos.

The finale is Mahler perhaps at his most optimistic. The movement seems to dance several waltzes along the way, but overall the feeling is that everyone is having a good time, even though the dance may seem to have a strange shape here and there.

The central scherzo is a very strange experience. Mahler more often than not uses the scherzo to be loud, abrasive, even cynical. But in the seventh, it seems more like a bad dream half-remembered. In between two movements, entitled Night Music, it sounds as if the composer was trying to get to sleep, then nodded off for a short time and dreamt, and then woke up before dawn to lie awake again. The night music movements are perhaps stranger than the scherzo, given their placement after a grand opening and before a triumph for conclusion. Overall, Mahler’s seventh seems like an inverted arch, with a keystone sticking up annoyingly in the middle to stop listeners from sliding down or up.

On a thoroughly successful evening, when the concert received rapturous applause from its audience, I find the need again to praise the ADDA audience for being such wonderful listeners. It’s as if this audience actually absorbs the music.

 

Paquito D'Rivera and Aaron Copland under Jost Vicent in Adda, Alicante

Apparently, this was a program of two halves. Meaningless phrases are always the best openings… On the face of it, the first half of this concert was dedicated to not only the performance skills of a notable Latin-jazz musician, but also featured his composing skills. Paquito D’Rivera was born in 1948 and made his first public performance as a musician between five and six years old. As he explained to the audience before the concert, that meant he was celebrating seventy years on stage.

He also told us that a friend told him a joke about an elephant, and that led to the composition of the piece that opened the concert, The Elephant and the Clown. This orchestral work lasts about eight minutes and features an array of percussion and lines that might be described as jazz riffs played by different sections of the orchestra, especially the strings. This is upbeat, optimistic music, which presents a sophisticated, improvised style to larger forces.

“The Journey”, Rice and Beans Concerto followed. This was utterly original in that it featured a quintet of soloists, playing percussion, piano, cello, harmonica and clarinet, the latter played by the composer himself. This combo of soloists played in concerto fashion alongside the orchestra in the piece that mixed Cuban rhythms with jazz, with classical forms, with African influences, and even the sounds of Chinese music, since one of the piece’s movements was inspired by a visit to a Chinese barrio in Havana. Antonio Serrano played harmonica and Pepe Rivero piano. Yuvisney Aguilar clearly had wonderful time on percussion, while Guillame Latil made light of an incredibly demanding and significant cello part, originally played in the work’s premiere by Yo-Yo Ma.

Overall, the three sections Beans, Rice, and The Journey made a spectacular impression on the audience, with again apparent jazz riffs regularly racing through the scoring. But this was not “light” music. There are really challenging sounds in this score, and many quotational references, both thematically and texturally to the concert hall repertoire of the twentieth century.

An encore was inevitable. Another short orchestral piece by Paquito D’Rivera filled the bill perfectly. Personally, I have never heard his music before this concert and this experience will surely have me thoroughly explore his works.

The other half of the contrast, in theory, came in the shape of the Symphony No. 3 of Aaron Copland. Could this be further from the riffs and improvisatory style of the first half? Surely this is one of the twentieth century’s major works…

And it was here that the stroke of Josep Vicent’s artistic direction emerged, because repeatedly in this score Aaron Copeland uses jazz like patterns in the strings. They are not as fast, not as advertently virtuosic as those that Paquito D’Rivera had written, but they were there. And, well, Paquito D’Rivera might be a Cuban, but he has spent much of his artistic life in the USA, effectively importing an émigré style and presenting it to an American audience. But we must remind ourselves that Aaron Copland’s family were themselves emigres from Russia. So this quintessentially American music might just have its roots elsewhere!

Copland’s Third Symphony is itself an optimistic affirmation of individuality. Just like jazz. And by the time the theme of The Fanfare for the Common Man appeared in the last movement, having been regularly suggested throughout the previous three, the effect is totally symphonic. The music seems to grow, with an idea that is bigger than its own sound.

But it is never secure in its affirmation. Modal harmonies see to that, always suggesting a major key, but always refusing to forget the possibility of the minor. There is always somewhere else in mind. Both Aaron Copland and Paquito D’Rivera remind us that we are all in the mix together, influenced by many cultures and sharing the same world.

Shostakovich’s Waltz from the Jazz Suites came as an encore. Its surreal use of a minor key for the dance’s main theme always surprises. Paquito D’Rivera also felt a certain surprise when the second encore offered Happy Birthday to him to celebrate his seventy years on stage.

Programa de mano Denia 3 oct 2024

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

This is a masterpiece of story-telling. It is short - about 130 pages - and tells the tale of a man living an isolated life in New England. The time is not specific, but the feel is always contemporary with the date of publication, which was 1911. The narrator met Ethan Frome in Starkfield, Massachusetts and immediately his countenance made its impression. He is described as already looking “as if he was dead and in hell.” The narrator sets about telling the story of Ethan Frome, a story that apparently is hard to extract from the laconic people who inhabit this part of New England. The structure of the novel, we are told, reflects this local habit, but by the time we are half way through, the reticence seems to have eased.

Starkfield is a harsh place. Winters are particularly difficult, and people measure lifespan by the number of winters they have survived. This is not a sociable community, we are told, and people live isolated lives. It is an isolation that in some ways is dictated by their environment. “Beyond the orchard lay a field or two, the boundaries lost under drifts; and above the fields, huddled against the white immensities of land and sky, one of those lonely New England farmhouses that make the landscape lonelier.” It is thus a place where the distance between people renders everything lonelier.

Ethan Frome has a sick wife. She needs a home help, live-in assistance. Mattie Silver is hired. She is young, full of life and frankly not much of a help. She is a relative of Ethan Frome’s wife, Zelda, and so is tolerated. Ethan is attracted. Mattie changes his life.

What happens is so important to the story that how it happens cannot be described. Let it be said that what appears to be a simple love triangle does not turn out to be so. Though reticent, these people live charged emotional lives and conflict is never far removed from the cold. 

Edith Wharton’s prose is wonderfully evocative of this isolated and inward-looking community. In her fiction, she is generally an urban creature, wandering the society events of New York, describing the nuances of class politics among the well-to-do. The fact that in Ethan Frome she inhabits a quite different environment with fundamentally different people living different lives is testament to her skill as a writer.

Dialogues and Natural History of Religion by David Hume

These extracts from the writings of David Hume concentrate on his views on religious belief. The Dialogues are clearly inspired by the writings of Plato in that, at least ostensibly, they are arranged as a discussion between three people of differing views. The Natural History Of Religion, on the other hand, is a more conventional analysis of several aspects of belief.

As ever, David Hume comes across as a logical positivist of the eighteenth century. For him, it seems that there are three possible positions to take on any natural phenomenon, belief or custom. First, something may be known. Where science has trod, where theory has been discussed and where findings have been demonstrated and then reproduced, Hume will admit no deviation of interpretation. Everything else is folly. Secondly, something may be widely assumed but as yet it remains unproven. Though he regularly alludes to such phenomena, he actually rarely analyses consequences of taking a particular standpoint, or pronounces on whether such things, perhaps at a later date, might become known. Throughout his pronouncements on such topics, he reveals himself to be as unquestioning of his assumed culture as anyone who espouses religion. An illustration of this tendency would be his regular reference to “savages”, people who don’t really qualify as human beings. These beings tend to live in Africa, in “jungles” or even in Asia. These are, of course, my own tongue-in-cheek words. He does not question the labels he uses, or their existence as such. But he repeats the position and clearly sees no reason to question it, despite the fact that it is not a “known” fact, in terms of there existing any kind of proof – or, for that matter, even evidence.

The third category in Hume’s thought relates to things that are unknown. Not only do these phenomena exist outside his concept of science in that they cannot be tested, but also, they defy description in a way that human beings can comprehend them. It is in this third category, the unknown, that human beings find fertile ground for their pronouncements of religion.

What is known is adequately described by this passage: “if the cause be known only by the effect, we never ought to describe to it any qualities beyond what our precise the requisite to produce the effect: nor can we, by any rules of just reasoning, return back from the cause, and other effects from it, beyond those by which alone it is known to us.” Here the process of scientific inference is raised to the status of a rational god, perhaps. But it is rational…

What is assumed but not proven is illustrated by this assertion: “I am sensible, that, according to the past experience of mankind, friendship is the chief joy of human life, and moderation the only source of tranquility and happiness. I never balance between the virtuous and the vicious course of life; but I’m sensible, that, to a well-disposed mind, every advantage is on the side of the former.” The assertion exists because he believes it, and can cite evidence, but he does not have proof. But equally he does not admit belief, believing that at some point the quality may be tested and proven, perhaps.

What is unknown, outside of human inference facilitated by a scientific method, then becomes explained by speculation, or invention. Human beings hold up a mirror to the universe, and in its see themselves and interpret phenomena beyond their understanding as mere aspects of themselves. “…there is an universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object, those qualities with which they are familiar acquainted, and of which they are intimately conscious. We find human faces in the moon, arm is in the clouds; and buy a natural propensity, if not corrected by experience and reflection, ascribe, malice, or goodwill to everything, that hurts or pleases us. Hence the frequency and beauty of […] poetry; where trees, mountains and streams are personified, and the inanimate parts of nature, acquire sentiment and passion. although these poetical figures and expressions gain not on the belief, they may serve, at least, to prove a certain tendency in the imagination, without which they could neither be beautiful nor natural… philosophers cannot entirely exempt themselves from this natural frailty, but have often described it to inanimate matter the horror of a vacuum […] and sympathies, and other affections of human nature. The absurdity is not less, while we cast our eyes upwards; and transferring, as is to usual, human passions, and infirmities to the deity, representing him as a jealous as jealous and revengeful, capricious and partial, and, in short, a wicked and foolish man, in every respect, but his superior power and authority.”

Personally, I have often wondered why, given our knowledge of the universe and our place within it, why the religious continue to use personal pronouns and human labels to refer to gods. “He, Father, Lord” are common: “it” and “thing” are not. In a reconstructed terminology, “The Lord is my Shepherd” would thus become “It is a thing”. Without the completely human dimension, the phrase becomes meaningless. With the human dimension raised to a status of essential, the phrase no longer describes anything that might not be earth-bound.

Hume expands on this elsewhere: “…the great source of our mistake in this subject, and of the unbounded license of conjecture, which we indulge, is, that we consider ourselves, as in the place of the Supreme Being, and conclude, that he will, on every occasion, observe the same conduct […] in his situation, would have embraced as reasonable and eligible. But, besides that the ordinary course of nature may convince us that almost everything is regulated by principles and maxims very different from ours, besides this, I say, it must evidently appear contrary to all rules of analogy to reason, from the intentions and projects of men, to those of Being so different, and so much superior.” He also equates the tendency to adopt religious believe to ignorance: “…it seems certain, that, according to the natural progress of human thought, the ignorant multitude must first entertain some groveling and familiar notion of superior powers, before they stretch the conception to that perfect Being, will be stowed order on the whole frame of nature.” He does however admit that there are possibilities for the committed: “A little philosophy, says Lord Bacon, makes men atheists: a great deal reconciles them to religion.”

Dialogues and Natural History of Religion are a superb illustration of what drove David Hume towards his eighteenth-century version of logical positivism. They come here with copious notes, where the numerous classical illusions are clarified, and where the author’s references to contemporary writers and texts, now forgotten, are referenced.

I do, however, find the format of the Dialogues gets in the way of the argument. I realize that Hume wanted to emulate the form of such writings as Plato’s Symposium, but here the structure becomes an imposition on the reader. There is no obvious stylistic difference between the three characters involved in this argument, so it is often confusing for the reader. This apart, the essays are a wonderfully enlightening read, even though they may present what, for some, may be a tough encounter with reality