Concert review: Does one piano make for an extravaganza? Yes, when it’s Yuliya Gorenman playing Bach
Anyone who bought a ticket to the opening performance of the 2019 season of the Northwest Bach Festival after seeing it advertised as an “extravaganza” might have been dismayed when, walking into the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist on Sunday afternoon, they saw nothing onstage but a single piano.
What? No chairs for an orchestra, or music stands for the soloists? Where were the dancers to perform, and where was the equipment for the light show? Scanning the program, a baffled ticketholder would have found the name of only one performer, pianist Yuliya Gorenman, and that of a single composer, Johann Sebastian Bach. You call that an extravaganza?
Well, yes, in fact. The root of the extravagance was Bach’s decision in 1722 to publish a collection of paired preludes and fugues on every key in what we now know as the standard chromatic scale, climbing by half-steps from C to C sharp/D flat, to D, to D sharp/E flat … and so on to the note B. That makes 12 pitches on which to start either a major or a minor scale, also referred to as key “signatures.” Since one of his purposes was to advocate the adoption of a certain system of tuning for keyboard instruments, he published the collection under the title, “The Well-Tempered Clavier” (“Well-Tempered” meaning “tuned”). Bach’s task, then, involved composing 24 pairs of original keyboard works demonstrating the beauty, power and variety inherent in each key signature
The other extravagant element to Sunday’s Bach Festival opening was Gorenman’s decision to perform not merely a few sets of preludes and fugues, but all 24. To do so requires not only tremendous stamina, both physical and psychological, but a keyboard technique capable of meeting any challenge and interpretive ability of the highest order.
It was plain from the start that Gorenman possesses a technique capable of meeting, indeed overwhelming any challenge. She exemplifies the Russian School of pianism, in which we number such titans as Sergei Rachmaninov and Emil Gilels. Like them, Gorenman plays with a consistently beautiful, warm tone and commands a very wide dynamic range, which she uses to express surges of emotion. She possesses a command of legato playing, or the tying together of notes in a way that imitates the human singing voice, and is skillful in using the piano’s sustaining pedal to intensify this effect.
Thus, Gorenman revealed much of the infinite variety of thought and feeling that lies within the first book of Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier.” Still, many of the attributes of the Russian School were developed more than 150 years after Bach’s work was published, in response to changes in the construction of the piano and in the composition of music written for it that Bach could hardly have imagined. They must be applied sparingly, if at all, to the performance of Bach’s music, and Gorenman sometime applied them in excess. Particularly during the first half of the program, her very full tone, seldom dropping below a mezzo-forte (i.e., fairly loud), swelling phrases, unvarying legato and over-pedaling obscured the brilliance of Bach’s counterpoint and made one feel that one was listening to preludes by Rachmaninov, rather than by Bach.
As the program progressed through the second half, however, her approach changed rather markedly, perhaps as she became more accustomed to the very resonant acoustics of St. John’s. Whatever the reason, her playing took on more of the clarity and transparency so vital to the enjoyment of polyphonic music. In the B minor fugue, Gorenman’s sovereign technique and that of Bach combined to provide an experience of the beauty and majesty of this music that was truly unforgettable.
On Wednesday, Gorenman will appear at Barrister Winery in the second concert of this year’s Northwest Bachfest. She will be performing her own transcription of Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s perennially popular symphonic suite, “Scheherazade.” If any work invites the full resources of color and emotion she commands, surely this one does. To any lover of Romantic music, and of great piano playing, the prospect is enticing.