Worth the Drive: The Steinway Series in Bellevue
Friday night local pianist Judith Cohen was featured in the first installment of the Bellevue Philharmonic’s Steinway Series. (The second features John Nauman, performing Liszt, Scarlatti, Haydn, Scriabin, and his own original composition, on January 16th.)
To get to the concert, we braved the sheets of rain and made our way to the Bellevue Arts Museum, turned sleek and modern recital hall for the occasion. There are many wonderful things to be said about Cohen’s program and her music, but from the start her ability to ignore outside distractions was impressive.
Before she began playing, a pervasive electrical buzzing was literally present, the B-flat of which created an interesting dissonance against the first piece of the program, Scarlatti’s beautiful A Major Sonata, K. 208. To give you a better idea of this dissonance, imagine the pitch relationship between A, the key of the Sonata, and B-flat, the pitch of the electrical buzz, a minor second which was made distinctively famous by the film score for Jaws. Cohen, if she noticed it, did not flinch or hesitate, but continued enthusiastically with the brisk tempo of the ensuing D Major Sonata, K. 33.
A musical program is an opportunity to challenge, educate, or simply entertain an audience--ideally all three--so next came a bit of candy to satisfy the sweet tooth of those in attendance, Debussy’s famous Claire de Lune. Cohen followed that with substance, a Debussy masterpiece, La Cathedrale Engloutie. The majestic rising of the submerged cathedral, made brilliant in the splendid radiance of the day, thundered in Cohen’s hands. But the weight of the edifice was too great and its fate was inevitable, as it slowly but steadily resigned itself once again to a world below the sea. Musical tone poems such as this require narrative sensitivity on the part of the musician and Cohen's telling was eloquent.
The great Gaspard de la nuit would have been a fitting continuation to a program that had taken a turn toward aesthetic intensity, but instead we returned to a world of familiar lightness, Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite for piano four hands (the additional paws provided by the amusing Dean Williamson). Many young piano students were present in the audience and this piece was likely included in the program for their benefit.
In the second half of the program, Cohen played a few études by Erwin Schulhoff, a composer who was tragically lost to the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp and whose music deserves wider distribution. Fortunately, in collaboration with Spectrum Dance Theatre, Cohen will tour with 45 minutes of études as accompaniment to dance. As an example of what to expect, it was clear that Cohen has an affinity for this music and the punctuated energy and edginess of the Charleston étude and the suave, languid Tango étude were both highlights of the evening.
The crown jewel, however, Alberto Ginastera’s Sonata no. 1, op. 22, was retained for the end. One of the joys in attending classical music concerts is experiencing the immense diversity of interpretation which artists bring to a score. As a postscript, we recommend you contrast Cohen’s interpretation to the miraculous guitar transcription, as recorded by the Assad Brothers (on the CD Saga dos Migrantes, a must have). Where the Assads are fast and intense, Cohen is more subdued; where the brothers are subtle, Cohen prefers instead to be articulate and aggressive, as in the third movement, Adagio molto appassionato.
