rss feedRadu Lupu plays Beethoven 3 with TSO
Sitting here, trying to find words to begin a post on Radu Lupu’s concert, I think I should just be honest and forward: it was such an incredible experience in which the music truly transcended me to a world only beauty resides.
My knowledge of Radu Lupu only lived on hearing his recording of some Brahms pieces (Op.118 especially, as I was working on it a few years back) and also the fact that my teacher and Lupu have studied with the same teacher. So, the lights dimmed, people’s chatter came through a diminuendo, stage door opened, my heart raced. Imaginging he would be dressed fancily in a tux perhaps – white and black – huge in physique and presence, but there he stepped out, all in black unassumingly. He carried an aura that was definitely present and noble – “royal” even, a word that has crossed my mind a few times during his performance. He reminded me of the late Brahms, but perhaps with a smaller physique, and of course he sat down at the piano on a very normal looking chair, back leaned against the back of the chair, and the music began.
I remember reading in the programme notes that Beethoven’s piano concerto No.3 was influenced by a Mozart concerto, and I thought Lupu’s rendition of the 1st movement had captured more charm and playfulness of Mozart which I never thought could be heard here. (Just a note: Lupu brought out some left hand “melodies” at the end of a predominanty right-hand melodic passage and the right hand withdrew to only provide colour backgrounds – perhaps not too Beethovenian?). As the 1st movement ended, there was such loudness in people’s coughing, shifting in their seats, talking, brushing hair – and Lupu sat on stage when all this was dying down, very gently and softly began the 2nd movement. After just about three chords into the movement, my tears rushed down – I felt my soul soaring into the air outside the hall into the Rheinland, the breeze and the taste of the soil after a gentle rain, how Beethoven would be pacing in the love nature provides… I didn’t want it to end but the third movement did proceed. I thought this was perhaps the most “Beethovenian” movement out of all three, and concluded the concert very well.
I think generally when people go to classical concerts, it is difficult not to appreciate the music from a critical point of view: how beautifully was the toned carried out, how nicely was the phrasing made, how intellectual was the whole structure planned out, how impaccable was the technique, and the list goes on. Perhaps we all have a little checklist and we subconsciously check what we like and don’t like. But tonight’s concert, it really had brought me into a living experience, into to the artful world of sound that was resonating in the concert hall which set my imagination free (even so, I still did a little bit of the “checklist” as you might have noticed from the above paragraph.. professional flaw?).
He was one of the very few “older generation” pianists I’ve heard live – after I think Lazar Berman (11 years ago?) and Fu Ts’ong. I savour this experience.
This is when they say, to go to a concert and have your soul cleansed.
(p.s. sorry Laomi I got your message after the concert… hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.)
