A versatile interpreter of piano classics

Recital
Erika Giananzè
Manoel Theatre

Pianist Erika Gialanzè is definitely one of the best local pianists of her generation. Her very well-attended and latest recital at the Sala Isouard proved to be a very enjoyable one. It must have cost her a great deal of preparation and one thinks that she delivered on every front.

This was a very important event for the pianist because it was in part-fulfilment of the Doctorate of Music degree in Piano Performance from the University of Malta.

One supposes it could be unnerving for a performer in that situation, with tutors present but keeping a cool nerve is something the young lady seemed to do. Her choice of programme was dabbed as “from Handel to Schönberg”. Such a choice takes a lot of pluck and preparation to cover such a wide diversity of idiom and style, same as it could be with works by composers who are contemporaries but who have their own individual voice to project.

Handel’s Suite No. 7 in G minor with its array of differently coloured dance movements was performed with elegant style and the appropriate touch of a work performed on a grand piano but originally meant for the harpsichord and which ends in a very well-known and very charming passacaille.

A different kind of touch ensured the full projection of the cantabile elements which permeate both outer movements of Beethoven’s very mature Sonata in A flat Opus 110.

This is a fine work, one of those which gave Beethoven a means of finding consolation and blessing amid all his personal tribulations. It found a worthy interpreter here who kept the music flowing and upheld that sense of thematic kinship and unity which characterises this work. The complex rhythmic nature of the scherzo and the difficult and challenging structure of the concluding arioso dolente, the latter featuring alternating passages in slow arioso tempo offset by more energetic fugues were well-handled. Its taxing nature made it an ideal conclusion to the first half of the recital.

Following the interval, the recital continued with one of Schubert’s sonatas in A Major, the Opus 120, No. 3. Here the mood was different, the transition smooth and as with Schubert, it was a series of beautifully expressed melodies.

There was a lot of that typically Schubertian warm, fun-loving humour in the finale in an all-round technically very sound performance. The warmth and passion in Chopin’s Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Opus 23 are of a different, heroic kind, offset by moments of great, lyrical passages and without detracting from the performance of the other works in the recital, this was definitely one of the best.

Schönberg’s Six Little Piano Pieces Opus 19 could not be more different. A listener could take time to adjust to the sudden change of idiom but a performer has to forge ahead without ado and the latter was the case. The handling of these very compact, brief, pieces was very efficient and practically almost over before they could be properly digested.

In conclusion, Ginastera’s Danzas ­Argentinas was a colourful rendering of three contrasting dances with that of El Viejo boyero (No. 1) being among the more startling in effect. La moza donosa’s (No. 2) piquant first melody and a certain degree of tension led to a broader more expansive mid-section with a return to the opening melody dressed up in a richer harmony but all within the parameters of a gentle dance.

The last dance, Danza del gaucho matrero, came in fully splendid and colourful contrast.