Jan. 25--One of the more unusual recitals of this or any other season occurred Sunday afternoon at Orchestra Hall.
The performer was Menahem Pressler, pianist and founding member of the Beaux Arts Trio, who in 2008 resumed the solo career he had left for chamber music more than a half century before.
Sunday's program was long by any standard, including music by Wolfgang Mozart, Franz Schubert, Gyorgy Kurtag, Claude Debussy and Frederic Chopin. But in December Pressler turned 92, and earlier in the year he still was recovering from life-saving heart surgery, so the audience ovation went beyond the ordinary even before he played.
His account of Mozart's Rondo, K. 511, set the pattern. It was spaciously conceived, gentle in character, delicately colored and without sharp contrast or aggressive attack.
It had the beauty of sound and sensitivity to nuance that Pressler long has prized.
Schubert's Sonata, D. 894, showed much the same tonal ravishment and patient unfolding. But here Pressler's serenity, that sense of a place apart, as if the music were not of this world, failed to hold attention over the long span, and the audience became restive.
In teaching, writings and interviews Pressler always has convinced that he loves the music he plays. And unlike with many of his colleagues -- shame on them -- such affection extends to contemporary scores. Some of the afternoon's most touching playing occurred in Kurtag's five-minute-long "Impromptu al ongarese ... to Menahem Pressler," a cryptic, characteristically spare miniature caressed from the piano at the threshold of audibility -- wonderful.
Pressler's mellow, unassertive way with Debussy's "Estampes" contrasted with the current fashion of making everything he wrote sound analytical, spiky and modern. Of Debussy's many markings, those calling for graciousness, delicacy and calm were the ones most persuasively observed; commands for "more abandon" and a "clearer sonority" went unheeded.
The concluding Chopin group was most convincing with a stately wistfulness in three Mazurkas -- Op. 7, Nos. 1 and 3, plus Op. 17, No. 4 -- and the highest order of self-communing poetry in the Nocturne in C-sharp Minor (Opus Posthumous), played as an encore. The Third Ballade, however, suffered a bit from sedateness and, on the penultimate page, blurred projection.
Alan Artner is a freelance critic.
