East Neuk Festival: Christian Zacharias
Crail Church - 03/07/22
The closing concert of the East Neuk Festival 2022 was billed as Christian Zacharias ‘Carte Blanche’. The published programme guaranteed a selection of sketches from Tchaikovsky’s Seasons, as well as Schubert’s Sonata in G, D894, but promised additional pieces, at the performer’s discretion, to be announced from the stage. This virtuoso pianist has had a long association with the Festival, including the very first one where he helped to establish its reputation as a celebration of chamber music excellence (and incidentally played the same great Schubert sonata!).
In the event, he introduced and chatted informatively about all the programme, being not merely performer but genial host. The written programme showed the Schubert after the interval, so he first explained that, such is the gravitas of the sonata, he would not feel like playing any encores after it (big ‘hint’!), and therefore would play it in the first half, after a 25-year-old Beethoven set of variations in the same key as an ‘appetiser’. Pausing for a brief anecdote about Artur Schnabel, this is what he did.
The first movement of the sonata is vintage Schubert, with multiple key changes, melodic exploration at its most inventive, subtly shifting moods and colours and a rhapsodic feel very reminiscent of an impromptu by the same composer. The cantabile playing, alternating with muscular dramatic passages (where that Steinway again delivered a huge sound), was exquisite. The Andante is a lyrical major-key melody punctuated with big dramatic minor-key moments, the latter filling Crail’s mediaeval church with sound. The minuet, dark with minor-key shades, contrasted with the sweetness of the delicate, hesitant, fragile trio in the major, all played with sensitivity and subtlety. The Allegretto finale, in a narrative anecdotal style full of rustic charm, sometimes ballad-like, sometimes polka-like, seems suffused with sunlight. The drama builds but does not derail the genial mood. There are of course multiple key changes. One minor-key interlude is song-like with a cascading accompaniment. The closing pages are joyous, but the piece ends gently leaving a warm afterglow. This was late Schubert played authoritatively with sensitivity and commitment and was thoroughly marvellous.
After the interval and before the Tchaikovsky, we were introduced and treated to another, more mature, set of Beethoven variations. Based on a Russian Dance from Weber’s first opera, ‘The Forest Maiden’, these are infinitely more inventive and imaginative than the earlier set. I am tempted to seek out a recording, as they received a compelling exposition and are an excellent piece of middle period Beethoven.
The Tchaikovsky Seasons (which should probably be called The Months, as there are 12 of them and they are named after the months of the year, lucratively written for serialised release in a St Petersburg magazine) comprise a set of Romantic miniature character pieces, of which a selection of 6 were performed. They are more evocative of mood than an exercise in picture-painting. I found them pleasant, engaging and entertaining and they were beautifully played. But (how shall I put it?) I won’t be seeking out a recording.
As ‘promised’ (or, at least, encouraged to expect) we were treated to two superb encores: the Menuet from Ravel’s Sonatine and a Scarlatti Sonata in ¾ metre with major and minor sections, which I am unable to identify.
This was a fitting and very agreeable closing concert to an excellent and welcome return of this great Festival. Already looking forward to next year.