Power overwhelms fleeting moments of poetry in Hobson’s latest Schumann installment
Pianist Ian Hobson was back at the Tenri Cultural Institute on Friday night to see the latest installment in his ongoing multi-season Schumann cycle, a program entitled Love And Nature I. While it was general enough to understand most music composed during the Romantic period, it was probably too amorphous a subject to relate to the works Hobson performed and the style and substance of his performance bring. Think of it as a way to open the door for Schumann.
Hobson performed three works from one of the composer’s most productive periods, including two of his most famous piano pieces, Arabesque, Op. 18; And novelettes, Op. 21. Between the two was flower piece, Op. 19. Hobson shared the great novelettes halved, with the last four of eight sections played after the break.
The love and nature metaphor referred most clearly to Hobson’s stormy game. The stormy was inherent in Schumann, part of his tragic psychology and a feature of his compositional style. As fitting as it is, it’s perhaps the most pervasive romantic cliché. One of the things that makes Schumann perhaps the most emblematic of Romantic composers lies underneath; how erratic his music is. Beyond the layers of emotional states and the rapid and extreme mood swings, music is ever-changing, seldom satisfied or comfortable enough to stay in one state for long, with the left and right hands simultaneously stumbling against each other and forward.
Hobson is clearly inspired by this music, and his natural inclination is passion and intensity; He quickly starts a fire and almost immediately stokes it into a rage. This passion is important to Schumann, but not the only important quality.
Hobson opened the arabesque with elegance and grace, the right way to build the sense of nervous anxiety that will seep into the music. The pianist approached this feeling with a beautiful impetuosity and also control, modulating well between moods of the music. One felt that the dotted rhythms appearing in the middle propelled him forward, and his playing gained weight and intensity, although by the end it lost some thoughtfulness.
This feeling of pressure was transferred to flower piece. The shifting moods and sensibilities were well timed at first, but as the music progressed, weight and heat built up again in Hobson’s playing. His involvement in the music was evident and his hands did impressive work on the keyboard, but the music’s intangibility and complexity was gradually reduced to sheer power.
The first of novelettes“Marked and Bold” begins with a bright fanfare, and Hobson’s chords were proud and sharp-edged. The dynamics and mood change abruptly after that, and Hobson followed the music for a while, but each return of the fanfare made him a little louder and a little faster.
Schumann has a wandering quality, the music propelling through episodes of imagination and internalized thought, only to return with an “Aha!”. Moment to initial compositional thought, as if someone were speaking with their mind wandering and then returning to the conversation. Hobson delivered plenty of “Ahas!” but not enough of the wandering.
His start in “Extremely Fast and With Bravura” was almost furious, and from that moment on, the novelettes never really let up, it was almost all heat, speed, volume and intensity. Part of it was out of Hobson’s hands; The Tenri room is intimate and also bright and very lively, not really able to support the low dynamic levels of the modern piano. There was insufficient acoustic space to encompass the range of Schumann’s expression, let alone Hobson’s playing, although close proximity to the pianist was an enticing way of hearing the details of the composer’s thought.
The final of novelettes, “Very Lively”, often performed as a standalone concert piece, was a microcosm of the performance. Hobson’s power and expressiveness were often arresting, and he regained focus after some apparent blurring in the previous section, but the music slides into quieter, gentler, more reflective sections that are important. In each, Hobson began with a note starkly different from the dynamics and mood before it, but only moments later the power flowed back like lava, inundating the delicacy one savored.
Ian Hobson’s Schumann Cycle continues on April 21 at 7:30pm at the Tenri Cultural Institute. eventbrite.com