MARIA CANYIGUERAL BEETHOVEN RECITAL
Conway
Hall, Holborn
Holborn’s acoustically comfortable Conway Hall quietly goes
about its Sunday evening business, presenting top-class music-making to
enthusiastically discerning audiences, and this latest recital, from Spanish
pianist Maria Canyigueral, was Conway at its best.
Her programme was a brilliantly obvious one, presenting the
three Op.2 Sonatas with which Beethoven set out his stall as a composer for
piano, and what a journey they represent. All three are dedicated to his
teacher Josef Haydn, and begin with a nod to their prickly tuition time
together before moving on to a glorious foretaste of what lay ahead for
Beethoven.
In an evening of poise, command and interpretative
integrity, Canyigueral launched the F minor Sonata with a lightness of touch which
permitted occasional moments of explosive power. She allowed the music to speak
for itself, all the drama emerging from the notes themselves, the sforzandi,
the off-beat distortions, her chording in the adagio rich beneath fluent
fioriture. In the finale she phrased so beautifully Beethoven’s brief homage to
his beloved Mozart, with whom he yearned to have studied.
Canyigueral was alert to the gruff wit of the A major Sonata’s
opening movement, Beethoven beginning to shake off any Haydnesque dust. Her
delineation of the bass line in the largo was pizzicato-like, and she was
meltingly expressive in the finale’s gracious lyricism.
Finally came another world with the imposing C major Sonata,
a big-boned work receiving here a big-boned performance. There are so many
awesome technical difficulties, from the interlacing thirds of the opening
right through to the chains of first-inversion chords in the finale, with so
much else along the way. Canyigueral was equal to all these demands in this
textural maelstrom, as well as being able to create mysterious harmonic
explorations in the finales of the outer movements. Her dynamic contrasts in
the adagio were well conveyed by the splendid Conway Bosendorfer – which responded
gratefully to a pianist of the calibre of Maria Canyigueral.
Christopher Morley