by Marvin J. Ward

Worcester, MA, 28 March 2008.  Faculty pianist Sarah Grunstein presented a recital in Brooks Concert Hall on the Holy Cross campus here yesterday evening that attracted a sizeable audience spanning several generations, including some of the 2700 students as well as some of the faculty, both active and retired, a cross-section not too often seen in classical music concert halls these days.

In an introductory comment, she stated that she had selected the works because all of them came across in many ways as improvisations, even though the notes are written out on the pages of scores, because their composers were all themselves great pianists and accomplished improvisers.  One of them, Claude Debussy, is said to have advised performers to play as if the notes weren’t there, advice obviously requiring a mental mastery of them for it to be followed.

Grunstein began with Frédéric Chopin’s 1841 Prélude in c#, Op. 45, and followed with Debussy’s Images, Book II, from 1907, music designed to conjure up mental pictures of the creatures, sounds, or scenes in the titles through the music alone.  The composer’s two sets of Images together with his Estampes are among this writer’s favorite short works for piano, his “desert island desiderata;” he owns several recordings, and would enjoy one on a contemporary instrument.  Chopin is called a Romantic composer, but the Prélude, emulating those of Bach, is all about form and nothing about emotion.  Debussy is called an Impressionist, and perhaps that term can be used to mean an evocation, but it doesn’t really seem any more accurate for this crystalline music than the one applied to Chopin.  The contrast between the two – form vs. function – could hardly be greater, and yet their juxtaposition opened up vistas for new contermplations in this context of an improvisation mindset.

This pair was followed by Beethoven’s Sonata in E, Op. 109 composed in 1820.  Its three movements do not follow the standard sonata format, the 2nd flowing immediately into the 3rd, which is a theme and variations, form that in its very nature derives from improvisation.  After the pause came Robert Schumann’s Fantasie in C, Op. 17, from 1836, yet another, though more loose form that originated in improvisation.  The pairing of these forms that vary or break the standard large-scale piano work molds felt more complementary than contrastive, however.

Performance was entirely from memory.  Grunstein is completely in command of her repertoire and her keyboard; she is able to make the sounds of final notes resonate and endure for amazing lengths of time.  She is also in control of her audience in a way that all too few artists are, and which many would do well to emulate.  She gathers her listeners up and takes them along, enraptured, on the musical journey as she wends her way through the compositions.  Sometimes she leaves us as emotionally drained as she must herself be.  She is also able, through her arm positions and body language, to prevent the audience from prematurely erupting in applause, and to prolong thereby the magic of the musical world into which she has taken us.  Yet none of this is just for show; there’s no flashy display whatsoever, just pure musicianship and musicality.  A rare talent, this.

Brooks Concert Hall is the former Chapel of the Jesuit priests who founded the college in 1843 (and whose successors still run it), adapted for this use mostly by the addition of risers to accommodate chairs for the audience in place of the former pews.  It is, therefore, a very ‘live’ space, one which reverberates readily and exaggerates imperfections; not an easy one for a musician to manage acoustically.  Again, Grunstein was in good control, but it unflatteringly magnified the disconnect of the two final note releases in which her fingers and feet weren’t in perfect sync, the only imperfections in this beautifully and otherwise impeccably played program.