Sunday evening concertgoers at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, were treated to a memorable recital from German pianist (of Iranian heritage) Schaghajegh Nosrati. A quartet of works were programmed, each a major entry of the piano repertoire, and each widely contrasting stylistically from the others.
Nosrati captured second prize a decade ago at Leipzig’s International Bach Competition, a composer she has been deeply associated with since — and counts seasoned Bach interpreter Sir András Schiff as a close mentor. The program opened with the wide-ranging Partita no. 4 in D major, beginning with a bold and exultant Overture that evidenced the work’s grandeur. Ornaments were crisp and precise, yielding a richness of texture further explored in a section of vigorous counterpoint. Nosrati did much to capitalize on the possibilities a modern Steinway offers this repertoire, with judicious pedaling and broad dynamic contrast.
The dance movements that followed were given with individual personality, beginning with a stately Allemande. The leaps in the spirited Courante practically danced across the keyboard, a mood sustained in the brief Aria. A Sarabande served as the spiritual heart of the work, giving way to the lighter movements that closed with the fleet Gigue especially remarkable for its multi-layered voicing.
Two sets of variations straddled the intermission, with the pianist first visiting Mendelssohn’s Variations sérieuses. Its passionate theme was brimming with potential, and the variations upon it quickly ramped up in speed and complexity. Nosrati offered a powerfully dramatic reading, interspersed with more introspective moments, but it was the arpeggios, broken chords, and octaves that impressed the most.
Haydn’s Variations in F minor showed the composer at his most forward-thinking and inventive. Expansive in form, the work is conceived as a set of double variations, with the first marked by a rhythmic snap, and its major key counterpart by expressive flourishes. Though a work of classical elegance, the present performance did much to convey its dramatic sweep, cresting in a majestic climax.
Nosrati has also established herself as a specialist of the rarefied sound world of Charles-Valentin Alkan, a contemporary of Chopin and Liszt. Writing music of extraordinary technical demands and on a gargantuan scale, Alkan’s magnum opus is the Twelve Études in the minor keys, of which nos. 4-7 comprise a standalone Symphony for solo piano, concluding Nosrati’s recital in spectacular fashion. Dark and impassioned, the opening movement lived up to the work’s promises in purveying a colorful orchestral sonority. With dense chords and rapid chromatic runs, the coda was chilling and catastrophic.
Only a funeral march could follow something so devastating. Sardonic and idiosyncratic, it almost anticipates Mahler. A contrasting section of reverential beauty presented chains of chords in striking harmonic modulations. Like the Bach that opened, Alkan used a Minuet for the penultimate movement, but the sharp accents and unbridled rambunctiousness made the latter’s worlds apart. Raymond Lewenthal, a key figure in the Alkan revival that began in the 1960s, memorably described the Symphony’s finale as a “ride in hell”. An apt description: nearly in perpetual motion, its technical fireworks brought matters to a dazzling close.
In her sole encore, Nosrati showed another side of the Alkan enigma in an artfully crafted miniature, a beguiling Barcarolle.
