French pianist Lise de la Salle began her Australian tour with a solo recital, before later this week she performs with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Her concert featured an entirely Romantic repertoire: two Ballades by Fryderyk Chopin and the three Franz Liszt pieces comprising her latest CD, called Phantasmagoria.
Swapping the two halves of the printed programme, she began with Chopin’s Ballade no. 4 in F minor, Op. 52, with nimble fingers and dreamy undertones. The meditative nature of her playing sounded so soothing that the fiery harmonic outbursts of the composer’s lines appeared to be boiling on a higher degree than the performance itself. The Ballade no. 1 in G minor, Op.23, heading the second half of the recital, was similarly dominated by a capped lyricism, yet its profound emotions were seldom reflected on the soloist’s facial expression or by her body language. De la Salle was perfectly in control of the demands of this magnificent work, all the way to its virtuosic coda, never losing her composure – although at times I wished she had.
The final piece in Liszt’s poetic cycle Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, the Cantique d'amour (or Hymn of Love) suited this mindset better. The soloist presented the soft internal melodic lines with delicate subtlety, her touch being feathery if not always velvety. As often in his piano works, the composer imitates the sound of the harp (he even instructs the performer to do so), hinting at exalted sentiments, which in this performance may have been better explored.
Vladimir Horowitz in his concerts often coupled two monolithic Liszt compositions, the Réminiscences de Don Juan and the Piano Sonata in B minor, which finished the two halves of this recital. The former, almost a catalogue of the best-known themes from Mozart’s Don Giovanni embedded into typical pianistic fireworks, was played with assured technique. Its seriousness changed into an easy-going musical smile, when the famous duet “Là ci darem la mano” was paraphrased, affording de la Salle humorous tinges for the first time during her recital.
The finely engineered machinery of her technique conquered the famous difficulties of the Sonata, as if the Lisztian keyboard could not provide any more challenges for her. This was reassuring in many ways, yet the throbbing pulse of the D major Grandioso theme radiated less passion than one often hears, and the fugue section felt more predictably safe than provocatively exciting.
The encore, a transcription of a Bach Flute Sonata Siciliano, revealed gentle humanity and offered the most rewarding moments of her recital.
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