Variations Admirably Suited for Levin's Temperament

July 3, 2006

By Tom Manoff
For The Register-Guard

In a time when many classical performances suffer from predictability, Robert Levin’s piano recital, heard Saturday evening at the University of Oregon’s Beall Hall, was a model of inventiveness.

Levin brings more than fingers to a concert. Famous also as a scholar and theorist – his completions of Mozart’s “Mass in C minor”" and “Requiem” bookend the Bach Festival schedule – Levin believes that classical music can not be performed or listened to successfully without understanding its cultural context. One of many examples he cites is language.

“Someone who speaks German and understands German cadence, will inevitably play Mozart measurably better, in sophisticated ways, than someone who doesn’t,” Levin told me in an interview some years ago. Pointing to differences between German and French music, Levin believes that, while language may not explain all the differences between such national traditions, it does explain more than a few.

Saturday’s program featured both German and French music.

Whatever their differences, all the works on this recital contained either a theme and variation form, or some aspect of variation technique. Variations are among the closest written music to improvisation, and their spontaneous quality seemed admirably suited for Levin’s probing, mercurial temperament.

Mendlessohn’s “Variations Sérieuses,” Op. 54 and Mozart’s “Sonata in F Major,” K.533 comprised the first half of the program. Each offered different musical worlds, especially as played by Mr. Levin. Mendelssohn’s sturdy, often somber work received a relatively straightforward reading. Brilliant, virtuosic passages near the end, provided some welcome, dramatic contrast.

In the Mozart, Levin seemed utterly transformed. Although playing a modern piano, Levin’s Mozart style has been honed on the fortepiano, the gentle predecessor of the keyboard we know today. Attention shifted away from the modern piano’s wide palette of colors, and focused more on the structural nuance of the notes, the unfolding of phrases, and the brilliant turns of form.

After intermission Levin played a relatively unknown work by J.S. Bach, the “Aria Variata in A minor,” BWV 989. Ravishing in the quiet beauty of its theme, and magical in the genius-struck variations on that theme, the performance was unforgettable .

The “Sonata for Piano” by Henri Dutilleux was the last work. Born in 1916, his style shows an attractive blend of contemporary harmony with clear, concise musical design. Like many French composers, Dutilleux can turn a light-hearted, unassuming melody into something profound. The opening movement of the sonata, for example, offers a short, almost jazzy little melody. At first you take delight in the recurring appearances of this little tune; then, almost without warning, the movement is over, and you’ve been led through a deeply satisfying journey of musical design.

The lyrical theme of the second movement is some of the most beautiful 20th century music I’ve ever heard. Here, as throughout the entire sonata, Levin drew extraordinary colors from the piano. He had transformed himself yet again, this time into a modern virtuoso, reeling off difficult and thrilling music with ease.

Levin’s thoughts about language were revealing for this French music, in the ways he coaxed delicious bits of sound into gentle phrases, while splashing the more driven moments with harmonic colors.

The final movement, a technically daunting set of variations on a chorale melody, brought an extraordinary evening to a close.

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Tom Manoff is the classical music critic for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.