Helene Grimaud.(Concert review)

Helene Grimaud, piano Carnegie Hall, New York. November 8, 2006

The French pianist Helene Grimaud hails from Aix-en-Provence, and her relationship to time--nurtured in a town where following the sun from cafe to cafe is the generally accepted way to spend one's Saturday afternoons--may explain why her Carnegie Hall recital debut began at twenty past the hour. Her Mediterranean pace may also account for why this internationally established pianist took until the age of thirty-seven to make her debut, though a more tangible factor may be Grimaud's dedication to wolves, namely, her Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem, New York.

Grimaud did ultimately make an entrance, strolling confidently onto the stage in a T-shirt, headband, and a pair of culottes, as though heading to the living room for a light practice--or a slumber party.

The program was Romantic, and began with Busoni's arrangement of Bach's Chaconne from the D-minor Partita for violin. It is viewed by many as the greatest piece of music ever composed for solo violin: arrangements and orchestrations have been numerous and largely ineffective, save for the piano arrangement by Brahms, which both captures the transparency and translates the difficulty of the masterpiece in a modest, note-for-note transcription for the left hand. Busoni's arrangement takes a nearly opposite tack, fleshing out chords, adding counter-point, arpeggios, and, frankly, bombast. That said, the Busoni has been in Grimaud's repertoire for years, and one hoped that she had found something in the arrangement that lies beyond surface sheen.

Indeed, Grimaud seemed to locate Bach's serenity in Busoni's pianissimo passagework, and there achieved the affirming, pitiless pulse that all Bach masters divine. While the more Lisztian sections flailed to delight or convince, quiet shifts to the major-key chorale and minor-key reprisal of the motif nearing the finale again found their mark. Grimaud lost the thread when she was in a more raucous state, and the myriad runs that concluded the piece seemed dunked in soup rather than polished. ...