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Photo: K. Gopinathan

VISUAL DELIGHT Instead of forceful bravura, Paul Stewart’s performance was restrained

The new instrument is the culmination of five years of arduous fund-raising by the devoted low-key group, led by their self-effacing president, Gita Chacko. The forum enables music teachers to interact, strives to improve teaching standards and methods with training lectures, workshops and master classes, and publication of a quarterly newsletter.

The piano will undoubtedly improve their programmes, and now students can take exams on an instrument worthy of their efforts. Hopefully there will be more student (and teacher?) concerts, presenting audiences with local musical talent, while exposure to the public will give students requisite performance confidence.

St. Mark’s has most obligingly allowed this precious instrument to remain in situ. Moving a concert grand is not only very expensive for the organisers, but is also ruinous to the instrument – particularly as most handcart/tempo loaders treat grand pianos and cupboards with the same brutal disregard.

Appropriately, the piano was inaugurated by Canadian pianist and teacher, Paul Stewart, who has given previous performances here, and whose workshops have encouraged and inspired local students and teachers. The popular programme manifested his brilliant virtuosity; not surprisingly, the hall was filled to capacity.

As a tribute to the occasion, he first played Schubert’s short “Ode to Music”. The thought behind Paul’s gesture was apposite, as the song’s text extols the glories of the art of music. Its vocal line rang clear and sweet in its harmonic simplicity and sweeping melody.

Stewart’s repertoire served his delicate touch well. Even his choice of Liszt – “Hungarian Rhapsody #15” – was mainly lyrical, with few of Liszt’s fiendishly tempestuous runs, though Paul was in full command of the piece’s characteristically challenging passages.

Beethoven’s Sonatas, “Pathetique” and the later “Op 110” in A flat major, confirmed Stewart’s admirable technical mastery and sensitivity to the composer’s innovative blend of the Gallant and the Sturm und Drang styles .

Instead of forceful bravura, restraint marked Paul’s emotion and body-language. His apparently effortless mastery and economic expenditure of energy when playing sforzando, can be misleading, giving the impression that his probing of Beethoven’s profundities lacked sufficient intensity or gravitas. The new piano’s light mild timbre exacerbated that perceived imbalance: its treble was bright but the bass was unsatisfactorily insubstantial. However, continued usage should season the instrument, giving it required depth and resonance.

Paul’s evident enjoyment at sharing his talent culminated in Chopin pieces, a befitting end to the very enjoyable recital. “Nocturne Op27 #2” is perhaps most typical of the composer, and Paul’s combination of sensitive tenderness and touch left one haunted with its melody. His feather light touch did not always result in contact with the keys, though this could also be attributed to the new piano: one saw his finger going down on the last note of the Medtner, though no sound emerged; in Chopin’s “Grande Valse Brilliante” not all the famous repeated six-notes were heard, as his fingers flew over them.

It was unfair to applaud him into an encore after such a long recital which concluded with a perfectly executed, rousing, but clearly exhausting “Heroic Polonaise”, but Paul obligingly returned to cool off with a gently tinkling “Gershwin”.

Stewart underlined his association with Bangalore with the inclusion of Medtner’s “Sonata Reminiscenza Op 38 #1”. He sympathetically portrayed both its tenderly melodic triste, as well as its brooding reflections of personal trials and post-Revolution Russia’s vicissitudes.

Paul was probably the first to introduce Indian audiences to the Russian composer, Nicolai Medtner. Ironically, though the erstwhile Mysore royal family was Medtner’s patron, he was relatively unknown here because his scores and recordings were not available till recently. Though a contemporary of Rachminoff, he was neglected even in the West; there is now a revival boom, with recording artists ever in search of fresh material.

“At my first concert in Bangalore, I played a Medtner piece. After the recital, an elegant lady came up and invited me to tea. It was Rani Vijaya Devi, and she showed me photographs of her with Rachmaninoff, Medtner. I then learned of that remarkable association, how she played for Medtner…The Mysore Maharaja rescued Medtner from obscurity, saving his scores and recording his performances, though they never met.”

Stewart first came to India in 1989, on his way to Singapore – except that he was so enthralled with this country that he converted his transit to an extended exploration. He soon arranged to give concerts and has returned several times.

“It is part of a professional’s job on tour to adapt to given conditions. Instruments are rarely perfect, they are bound to vary. I just need a bit of time to familiarise myself with each one’s peculiarities,” he said.

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