A jaw-dropping live performance, and by some distance the best one I've heard.
The Don Juan paraphrase has attained a terrifying (and deserved) reputation as one of the most technically challenging works in the literature, but less remarked upon is the uncanny dramatic insight with which Liszt integrates the music of the statue of the dead Commendatore, the drinking song, and seduction duet into a narrative that celebrates Don Giovanni’s life and yet relentlessly reminds the listener of his eventual punishment.
The work opens with the Commendatore’s music, both from the graveyard scene where he threatens Don Giovanni and from the finale where he condemns Don Giovanni to hell. There is very little in this section that’s superfluous, despite the apparently florid writing: nearly everything evokes a distinct orchestral texture or passage from the original music, from the eerie modulating scales [3:02] to the sparse declamatory passages [2:35] (both from the final scene).
After this comes the seduction duet and two variations on this theme, and then an extended fantasy on the champagne aria so intense it feels like an amphetaminic dump straight to the aorta. Importantly, the Commendatore recurs throughout. He appears in the transition from the seduction duet to the drinking song at 11:39 [“Tu m'invitasti a cena...” - the Commendatore invites Don Giovanni to dine with him in hell], 15:12 [note also that the LH mirrors the middle voice from the opening section at 1:04], and at 15:48, where, in what might be the most bone-chilling moment of the entire piece, darkness swarms up to interrupt the lurid ecstasy of the finale, a reminder that underneath the celebratory mood that dominates the piece something more disturbing lies (this passage is often omitted by pianists, which seems pretty unforgivable).
Okada’s playing here is incredible. The technical mastery is stunning, of course, but is more importantly always used in service of the music. The variations on the seduction duet, for instance, at kept at a tempo that retains the original’s languorous, slightly oily feel, and the opening is played with nearly unmatched intensity. The leaps beginning at 13:49 are played with such a sense of fun - and with such lightness - that it’s hard not to feel like laughing out loud when they arrive, the staccatos at 10:20 are miraculously preserved, and the finale is played with that possessed, almost-but-not-quite-lost control that Horowitz managed to make his trademark.
6 окт 2016
