Making the Difficult Look Easy, Part 2
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
New York Times

New York Times - Review

One of the most astounding displays of technical virtuosity, musical insight, sheer brilliance and stamina in my concertgoing life came in December at Zankel Hall when the French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard played a complete performance of Messiaen's exhilarating "Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus," more than two hours of the most formidably difficult music ever conceived for the piano. The ovation from the audience that packed the hall that night was as ecstatic as Messiaen's mystical music.

Zankel Hall was packed again on Monday night for Mr. Aimard's second recital of the season, this time offering, if anything, a more difficult program: Elliott Carter's "Night Fantasies" (1980), preceded by Mr. Carter's more recent "Two Diversions" (1999) and followed in the second half by Charles Ives's daunting "Concord" Sonata, composed from 1911 to 1920. Again the ovation was prolonged and deserved.

Mr. Carter has said that when he composed "Night Fantasies," he had piano works like Schumann's impetuous "Kreisleriana" in mind. Not Schumann's richly Romantic harmonic language of course: "Night Fantasies" offers Mr. Carter in his super-complex mode, an ingenious amalgam of the 12-tone aesthetic and pungently modern sonorities of his own devising. But with its sudden shifts in mood and character, "Night Fantasies" does try to convey a type of rhapsodic wildness similar to that of "Kreisleriana." By now Mr. Carter's work would be a staple on the programs of adventurous pianists were it not so impossibly difficult.

But you wouldn't have known how challenging it was from Mr. Aimard's commanding performance. I have heard it played with more Schumannesque spontaneity, but never with such uncanny clarity and sensitivity to color. And was it his French heritage that had the outbursts of hyper-fast, spiraling figurations in the high range of the piano sounding like lacy Debussy? When the performance ended the limber Mr. Aimard leapt from the Zankel Hall stage to the floor of the orchestra section to congratulate Mr. Carter, 95, who beamed with gratitude.

Having recently reviewed Mr. Aimard's Warner Classics recording of Ives's "Concord" Sonata, I thought I would be prepared for the impact of hearing him play it in person. Not so. It was overwhelming, and also affecting, to hear this music come to life so vibrantly, so naturally, it seemed, while watching Mr. Aimard work so arduously to pull it off.

The long opening movement, "Emerson," emerged as a visionary, crazed and apocalyptic outpouring. In the second movement, "Hawthorne," Mr. Aimard shifted easily between the episodes of frenetic rat-race counterpoint and the more static spans of murky colorings with soft clusters of notes produced, as required, by depressing a 12-inch length of wood on the black keys. And how did an intellectual French pianist steeped in Boulez and Ligeti develop such a nostalgic (yet completely unsentimental) feeling for the hymn tunes that Ives weaves into "The Alcotts" and "Thoreau," the final two movements?

It's clear that Mr. Aimard, a champion of contemporary music, can play whatever he wants, the thornier the better, and be assured that his admirers will fill the hall.

hi,
i am glad that someone is mentioning him. i heard him playing Beethoven's 5th piano concerto last summer and was greatly impressed, and then recently, i went to see his perfomance in Cleveland when he was playing Dvorak's piano concerto just so that i could hear him again. i particularly bought a binocular with me to watch his hands over keyboard. how greatly was i impressed again! he plays with sheer delight, sensitivity and virtuosity, and never bang over the keys even when the loudest chords are played. his hands are so relaxed over keys with such ease, which felt like everything is so easy for him. i left with such great pleasure...