Nelson Goerner started his recital with the mixture of nearly-forgotten and most-popular Liszt’s piano music, performing Ballade in B minor and Sonetti del Petrarca (104 and 123). The pianist gave justice to the Ballade, a work of that we would like to listen to more often. The performance of the Sonetti was very warmly received, as there were many poetic moments in the interpretation, quite justly, as it was poetry that had inspired the composer to write those works. Without any doubt, Goerner knows Petrarch’s Sonetti and his playing was inspired with the Italian texts. Following the Liszt’s suggestion, that there is a “hidden relationship that unites every work of genius”, we found out that Goerner’s performance of Liszt’s Sonetti was close to the art of a great Polish actor, late Roman Wilhelmi...
The final item of the first half of the recital was Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantasy in A flat major Op. 61. In the view of Goerner this work was much more of a fantasy than of polonaise. The introduction was performed mysteriously, with the focus on the overall image than the detail. Therefore the emerging theme, the Cosmos, really appeared out of the Chaos. The immense conflict between those contradictions seemed to be a basic idea of the Goerner’s approach to the work, perhaps a little bit pessimistic view, as much care was given to the bridge sections and the thematically-established sections were played with rather casual tone, as Chaos was about to win and Cosmos was something of only temporal value (noteworthy, modern scientists assure us that this is indeed the situation observed in the Universe).
After the intermission Nelson Goerner gave an exciting performance of the complete Symphonic Etudes (Op. 13 and Op. posth.) by Schumann. The movements were arranged as one large-scale work, and its execution was next to perfect. The tone colour of the piano was noble and powerful as it seemingly originated in pianist’s imagination, not in muscles. The pianist was able to control every aspect of performance, making the slow movements (Schumann pretended they were written by Eusebius) the climax of the form. And with the grandioso finale on a beautiful theme by Marschner, Goerner won hearts of all.
The first encore was Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in G major Op. 32 No. 5 that was played with phenomenal approach to sound, with subtle change of tone colour with every modulation – an aspect of the performing art rarely heard even among top class pianists. Second encore was exciting version of Chopin’s Etude in C sharp minor Op. 10 No. 4, while the third encore was…

…please, allow me to stop here for a moment. Almost no artist announces the encores, with notable exception of Garrick Ohlsson. Well, with popular works the quiz makes sense, as satisfaction comes from guessing right. But what is the point of playing the neglected piece by forgotten composer without making an announcement? We would imagine that the goal of such a performance is to put audience’s attention to a work that was unjustly put into oblivion. But as no one knows the work or the composer, the goal is not achieved…

…Arabesken / über Themen des Walzers / An der / schönen blauen Donau / von / Johann Strauss [the Younger] / für Klavier / Zum Konzertvortrag eingerichtet / von / Schulz-Evler. Adolf Schulz-Evler (whose name was also given as Andrey), a Polish composer and Tausig’s disciple, is known today, if at all, from this concert paraphrase of famous Strauss’ work. It became quite popular as an encore since 1990’s, but there were earlier performances as well. Nelson Goerner was enjoying his pianism in its purest form, entertaining the audience in a most joyful way. After all, the classical music concert is an entertainment, isn’t it?

Krzysztof Komarnicki