Libor Novacek, Darlington Arts Centre (From Darlington and Stockton Times)
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Libor Novacek, Darlington Arts Centre
4:35pm Friday 18th February 2011 in Arts
MAKING his third visit at the invitation of Darlington Piano Society, Czech pianist Libor Novacek offered two “pictorial” works and a ground-breaking Haydn sonata.
He began with a piece by his fellow countryman, Leos Janacek: autobiographical musical snapshots from Book I of On An Overgrown Path, recalling events in the composer’s earlier life.
These remarkable pieces were traced with great sensitivity, particularly in A leaf blown in the wind, with its yearning for times past; brevity and playfulness in Come with me; sheer beauty of the church processional in The Virgin of Frydek; and the depth of emotion on the death of the composer’s daughter Olga in 1903, in the final trio of pieces in the cycle.
With Haydn’s Sonata in C, Hob XVI:50 came a brilliant display of good humour and wit, arising from the composer’s experiments in the newly-developed modern piano, performed with a nice blend of fun, robustness and sensitivity, enhanced by the pianist’s facial and body language.
This was also a feature of the musical perambulations round the Hartmann exhibition in St Petersburg of the 1870s, as each reaction to a painting was brought to life in Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.
The Old Castle was beautifully expressed, as was the image of the grinding wheels of the Ox Cart in Bydlo, the yakety-yak of women in Limoges and the visceral nastiness of Baba Yaga’s Hut on hen’s legs.
The final picture, The Great Gate at Kiev, sounded out with grandeur and power.
What to offer after all this as an encore? Novacek played a brief, quiet piece by an unnamed Polish composer that never strayed far from the top octaves of the piano – a musical box or clock perhaps?
Sarah Beth Briggs returns on March 12 – she was taken ill suddenly in midconcert last season – with a programme of Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart and the great Liszt B minor Sonata; tickets from 01325-486555.
Dave Robson
