Afternoon delight at Chan Centre

Very full house listens to Yefim Bronfman

by David Gordon Duke

YEFIM BRONFMAN
In recital
Vancouver Recital Society
Chan Centre, Nov. 28

The audience at the Chan Centre for the Vancouver Recital Society’s 25th anniversary party expected a festive affair. A very full house celebrated the local vigour of the once-endangered recital with tickets prices from the 1980s, old reviews, congratulatory wishes, and lagniappe (chocolate rumballs and musical fortune cookies). But the real pleasure of the afternoon was listening to VRS favourite Yefim Bronfman in a recital of Schumann and Prokofiev.

Bronfman opened Schumann’s Arabeske (Opus 18) in an understated, limpid haze of sound, an intimate beginning that allowed the music to blossom over the course of the short, familiar work. Often he would explore a particularly notable combination of ultra-clear melodies floating over blurred left-hand figurations.

Bronfman’s greatest strengths are tone and colour. His subsequent performance of the more rarely programmed Humoreske (Opus 20), used both to define what could be a rambling and diffuse piece in less responsible hands. Without imposing an arbitrary sense of structure, Bronfman established continuity and variety through winningly appropriate timbres that reflected the mercurial nature of the music.

After the interval came surprises: Bronfman tucked in the Canadian premiere of Dichotomy, by the L.A. Philharmonic’s Finnish conductor/composer Esa-Pekka Salonen. Its two complementary movements, "Mechanism" and "Organism," graft toccata-style virtuosity to post-modern minimalism. In "Organism," additive melodies emerged from a rhythmically pulsing web of sound, a texture tailor-made for an artist with Bronfman’s pallette and touch. Dichotomy proved unimpeachable music with style and appeal.

Then, instead of Prokofiev’s Sixth Sonata as billed, the more popular Seventh rounded out the program. Bronfman is known for his affinity for Soviet music, and to say that he understands its hard- edged idiom is as superfluous as commenting on his virtuoso chops. His reading was no disappointment. He established a purposeful balance between lyric and dramatic elements in the opening Allegro inquieto, and allowed the droll Andante caloroso just a flash of bleak intensity.

The tour-de-force Precipitato finale, with its driven asymmetrical rhythms and wall-of-sound sonorities, brought the afternoon to a thundering conclusion.

Vancouver Sun
1 Dec. 2004

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