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WALL
STREET JOURNAL
A Prize-Winning Pianist And His Taste for Paradox
By Matthew Gurewitsch
Kalamazoo,
Mich. "We had this idea," says Daniel R. Gustin,
director of the Irving S. Gilmore International
Keyboard Festival, "of going forth across the
land and discovering some diamond in the rough,
the way they found Lana Turner at Schwab's Drug
Store."
What Mr.
Gustin and his anonymous committee of six were
searching for was the next Gilmore Artist: a pianist
of any nationality and age, worthy, in the language
of the judges, of a "global career."But budding
virtuosi do not manifest their potential sitting
at soda fountains. And so, unbeknownst to the
candidates, the Gilmore scouts shadow them, evaluating
them over a period of two-and-a-half years in
performances the world over. Only then does Mr.
Gustin call on the unsuspecting chosen one to
break the news.
This year, the committee settled on Piotr Anderszewski,
a 33-year-old Polish-Hungarian artist based in
Paris. Quick to win constituencies wherever he
plays, Mr. Anderszewski has likewise met a warm
response from reviewers everywhere for his recordings
on Harmondia Mundi (pellucid, poetic Bach) and
Virgin (majestic Beethoven, crystalline Mozart).
But for a quick introduction to the man and musician,
the place to start is Bruno Monsaingeon's film
"Piotr Anderszewski Plays 'The Diabelli Variations,'
" dedicated to Beethoven's late, craggy masterpiece
(2000, Video Artists International, VAI 69231).
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Inaugurated
in 1991 and bestowed once every four years, the
Gilmore honors the memory of the Kalamazoo businessman,
music lover and philanthropist whose name it bears.
In just over a decade, it has evolved into one
of the most prestigious prizes in a crowded field,
not to mention one of the most generous. (The
cash award is $300,000.) The festival, a biennial
event, has expanded this year from one week to
two, ending this Saturday. Dominated by keyboard
music, it is a highly eclectic affair, by no means
limited to the piano or the classics. Harry Connick
Jr. and his Big Band have already played festival
gigs, and by closing night Chick Corea and Dave
Brubeck will have swung through, too.
But there
was no question who the star was on opening night,
when Mr. Anderszewski teamed up with the Kalamazoo
Symphony Orchestra, introducing himself to the
Michigan audience with concertos by Mozart and
Bartók. Later in the week came the indispensable
formality of a master class, and last Friday,
the new Gilmore Artist's début recital, a program
of Bach.
That afternoon,
when many performers might have insisted on total
peace and quiet, Mr. Anderszewski welcomed a visitor
to his quarters in an airy high-rise overlooking
predominantly low-rise central Kalamazoo. Before
settling in to converse, he selected, prepared
and sipped an exotic tea, a ritual he enjoys.
Thin as a wraith, his black hair cropped close,
with a wistful, gap-toothed smile and a straight,
stately nose, Mr. Anderszewski is not one of those
musicians with nothing but music on their minds.
Among his passions are serious novels (but not
poetry) and architecture, notably that of New
York City. His jeans and black top suggested a
blasé existentialist from the Left Bank. Yet something
in his open, friendly manner conveyed the vulnerability
and innocence, and something of the loneliness,
of a schoolboy wise beyond his years. Later, he
admitted that his mind was wandering a little,
in fields of fugues and preludes.
Some interpretative
artists are flattered to be told that they seem
not to be imposing their personalities on the
music. Mr. Anderszewski is not so sure. "I'm suspicious
of performers who say, 'I only serve the composer.
It's not me in the limelight.' You express the
composer, but you express yourself as well. Of
course, I don't want not to respect the music.
I try to play the composer as much as possible,
but the message always goes through me. It's always
personal, subjective."
Notoriously
self-critical, Mr. Anderszewski has spoken in
interviews about his distress at the popular success
of performances that have fallen short of his
own expectations. "Those differences used to bother
me a lot," he acknowledged. "But my life is to
communicate. I have to accept that someone is
touched by something that leaves me cold, or that
something touches me that leaves another person
cold. The equation is complicated, too subtle
to capture. That can be disturbing. Overall, it's
good."
The Bach
recital that evening cast the artist in a pair
of strangely contrasting roles. To Mr. Anderszewski's
mind, little of Bach's genius depends on the keyboards
of the composer's time. Mimicking a harpsichord,
as certain historically informed pianists attempt
to do, makes no sense to him at all. "I don't
want to castrate the piano," he said in the afternoon.
"I want to use its full potential."
And that
night he did. Yet the first half, a set of preludes
and fugues from the second book of "The Well-Tempered
Clavier," struck many of his listeners as strange
to the point of being perverse. The preludes were
mostly dreamy and far away. The fugues took on
far more varied character, some wound tight, some
sharply chiseled, some to the contrary quite vague.
Fascinating, yes, but nervous, tentative, arbitrary.
After
intermission, Mr. Anderszewski returned with the
Partita No. 6 and the English Suite No. 6, both
based on dance rhythms, and played with a dancing
pulse, a singer's sense of melody and textures
of lacy transparency -- interpretations as polished
as they were spontaneous.
"The first
half was me playing, still figuring things out,
making decisions," he said after the concert,
withdrawn to a quiet corner of a house buzzing
with Kalamazoo's civic leaders and arts patrons.
"The second half was music I haven't played for
years. I started to practice a little yesterday,
but then I put the music aside and said to myself,
'No. Studying it now will make it like the new
things. Too conscious. Let your angels play for
you.' " What more could Irving Gilmore hope for?
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