All eyes—and ears—are turned to the attention of the pianist entering onto center stage just as the performance is about to begin. Once the music starts playing, the concert hall turns silent, and the piano does all the talking. In the case of Saturday afternoon, Per Tengstrand presented pieces on different pianos, giving three times the amount of conversation one usually hears from a piano recital.
Tengstrand, a renowned Swedish pianist, has been internationally acclaimed, producing music that, according to The New York Times, is “rewarding,” possessing a “technically polished” air. Some of his regular venues include orchestras found throughout Sweden, including Helsingborg, Tapiola, and Stockholm. He has also performed with the Osaka Philharmonic, Singapore Symphony, National de France, and Suisse Romande orchestras. In the opening weekend of the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, Tengstrand visited Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to inaugurate the pianos that grace the concert hall with three pieces specifically chosen for each of the Busendorfer, Fazioli, and Hamburg Steinway grand pianos on stage.
The first piece, titled “Dichotomie” by Esa-Pekka Salonen, was played on the Busendorfer, a piano—according to Tengstrand—with a “thicker sound” and “less power” or “clarity” compared to the other two pianos on the stage. “Dichotomie” consists of two movements: Mecanisme, where the music delves into the emotions of a machine, rendering it imperfect, like a human being; and Organisme, a slower movement that gradually replaces the first one and shapes itself to a quite different mood by the end of the piece. Salonen’s “Dichotomie” fit the Busendorfer’s deep, thick sounds that Tengstrand described. As the piece continued to play, the audience became well aware of the “machine’s” experience of humanity and growth.
On a slightly different tune, the Fazioli produced a more defined clarity in its notes, as opposed to the blurred thickness of the Busendorfer. So, to magnify the important difference and put the Fazioli at its most efficient, Tengstrand chose selections from Maurice Ravel’s five-movement “Miroirs,” including the fifth movement, “La Vallée des Cloches” (or “The Valley of Bells”). “Miroirs” definitely held a much lighter and clearer tone than that of “Dichotomie,” and when Tengstrand said that the audience would be “hearing bells” for most of Ravel’s piece, he did not fail to deliver.
The last song, “Après une Lecture de Dante” (“After a Reading of Dante”) by Franz Liszt, was saved for the powerful Hamburg Steinway. The song itself portrays Dante’s travels in Hell and experiencing the sadness of death. To Tengstrand, the Steinway provides for a strong sound, and “all nine feet of the piano” were put to good use for Liszt’s piece. Tengstrand had commented on the music as “a hellish trick, even on the piano,” which elicited laughs from the audience. Yet when he performed “Après une Lecture de Dante” on the Steinway, the audience could only look on with wonder at the speed, precision, and physical emotion that went into the piece.
When the concert ended, a standing ovation for Tengstrand was well-deserved; he had given the audience a taste of EMPAC’s grand pianos, and what better way could the Busendorfer, Fazioli, and Steinway be introduced?
