Despite being technically retired, Maria João Pires maintains a daunting diary. The 78-year-old pianist remains a sought-after concerto soloist and chamber musician throughout Europe, but she rarely ventures over to the United States these days. So when she quietly launched a small recital tour at Severance Hall in Cleveland on 3rd May, prior to performances in Miami, Kalamazoo and Chicago, it seemed like an unmissable event.
Pires’ playing offers a window into a style of pianism that feels exceedingly rare nowadays. She exudes a relaxed gracefulness. She demonstrates an exquisite sense of phasing and seamlessness in shaping a line. Nothing is gratuitous or done for its own sake. I detest when people say that an artist “lets the music speak for itself” – a phrase that usually drips a thinly veiled reactionary attitude – but in the case of Pires, I can summon no greater compliment than that her elegance and restraint are always in service to the composer.
In Schubert’s Piano Sonata no. 13 in A major, D.664, she charted a natural progression from the charming but somewhat meandering Allegro moderato to the searching, contemplative Andante. Her soft-grained, detailed playing in the first movement took on weight and a more dramatic shading in the second, which then dissolved into impishness in the final Allegro. Pires launched into this final section without pause, and she seemed to revel in the humor of Schubert’s myriad false endings. Each repeated passage took on a different character as Pires guided the work to its relaxed ending.
The rather light touch and lithe spirit Pires brought to this “Little” sonata contrasted with the composer’s more substantial Piano Sonata no. 21 in B flat major, D.960, which occupied the entire second half of the program. She directed the music to death’s door, from the somber hymn-like opening phrases of the Molto moderato to the foreboding energy of her bass trill. The broken melodies of the Scherzo almost suggested the physical manifestation of an ailment, not unlike the arrhythmias that some listeners here in Mahler’s Ninth Symphony – another work written while the Reaper beckoned. Pires perhaps rode the pedal a touch hard in the Allegro ma non troppo, but taken in total, it was a profound reading of a deeply affecting work.
Sandwiched between the sonatas was Debussy’s Suite bergamasque. It takes a true artist to inject a sense of mystery into Clair de lune, that most familiar of melodies, but Pires achieved a sound here that was lush without being lachrymose. She brought a hazy dreaminess to the Prélude, a marching intensity to the Menuet and a sense of jazz to her phrasing of the Passepied. So as not to imbalance the proceedings, Pires returned to Debussy for her encore, offering a meltingly lyrical reading of the Arabesque no. 1 in E major.
This year marks the 75th anniversary of Pires’ first public performance, at the age of four. The ensuing decades have not diminished her style nor her stature, and while she certainly deserves a long and leisurely retirement, this Cleveland appearance suggests that her service to music is far from finished.
