Beatrice Rana wound up her eight-stop US tour at Carnegie Hall, performing a formidable program framing six technically challenging Études by Debussy and excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite with opening and closing pieces by Prokofiev. After confidently striding onto the stage and making a hasty bow to the audience, she sat down and immediately launched into a warlike rendition of the slow, menacing main theme of The Montagues and Capulets (also known as Dance of the Knights), the most famous piece in Prokofiev’s ten-movement piano suite from Romeo and Juliet. Together with the calmer, more solemn music of Friar Laurence, the youthful exuberance of Young Juliet and the quick-witted energy of Mercutio, all effortlessly dispatched, the performance offered an impressive display of her power, technical prowess and precision, but it felt somewhat lacking in emotional depth and subtlety.
Debussy’s tremendously demanding second book of Études, Book II came next. Unlike in Book I, whose main focus is on traditional digital mechanics, using specific intervals (thirds, fourths, etc.), the six pieces in the second volume, a work seldom heard on the concert stage, delve into more abstract, advanced aspects of pianism – sonorities, timbres and complex musical elements and configurations. Putting to the test the composer’s declaration that “the portals of music can only be opened with formidable hands”, Rana had no trouble negotiating the immense technical challenges. In a performance highlighted by its speed and apparent ease, Rana demonstrated an extraordinarily wide range of touch and sonority – moving from light and bright to softly muffled, and then on to unusually strong marcato.
After intermission came something less intense: three highly contrasting selections the Mikhail Pletnev 1978 transcription of excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. After a stunningly colored, rhythmically rich March came a twinkling, nimble-fingered take on the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Most impressive was the culminating Intermezzo, perfectly shaped and imbued with orchestral-like color and lyrical expression.
The program ended with a high-octane account of Prokofiev’s turbulent Sonata no. 6 in A major. Written in 1939-40, it is the first of the composer’s three “War Sonatas”. The four-part, predominantly anxious work exhibits a series of conflicting moods. The relentless dissonances of the opening bars give way to a tender lyrical theme. A mostly playful Allegretto second movement is followed by the languid waltz-like tempo of the third, and an impulsive Vivace final movement, by turns frenzied and bizarre. Rana fearlessly attacked the clashing chords and brought a dramatic intensity to the fiery piece, as violent depictions of conflict and suffering alternated with moments of interior tenderness.
As encores, Rana offered more familiar fare: a gently flowing account of Scriabin’s Étude in C-sharp minor, Op. 2 no. 1, followed by a rapid-fire version of Debussy's Étude No. 6, “pour les huit doigts” (eight fingers, no thumbs) from his Book I set.
