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A rapturous recital
It would be nice if those foreign countries that dole out small fortunes to further the cause of education in Pakistan would put by a small amount for deserving young musicians so they can study in Paris or Vienna
The piano recitals given by the three Anees brothers — Ahsan, Usman and Asad — on May 7 and 8 at the PACC in Karachi were a delightful interlude in the city’s cultural calendar. The last time one heard the trio entertain a select audience was over two years ago, at the residence of the then British Deputy High Commissioner, David Pearey.
Since then, their public appearances have been rare and depend on sponsorship and promotion. Therefore, it was a pleasure to hear them on the ivory keys once again. The event was not advertised, but the hardcore western music enthusiasts (which number around 50), on hearing about the concerts, dutifully turned up.
Usman Anees who performed solo on the first day of the event gave a robust account of himself. The audience was treated to a sustained piece of piano playing spanning a large range of dynamics and showing a lucid, fairly mature sense of musical structure. He gets better with every performance.
The Beethoven sonata popularly known as The Farewell was a nice curtainraiser. The absolute stillness in the auditorium was tribute to a distinguished performance. The manner in which Usman tackled the buoyant phrase arches and reached to the warmth that is readily kindled under the surface was marvelously involving.
This was followed by Schumann’s Scenes of Childhood. This sketch is often thrown into a repertoire for reasons known only to the recitalist, for it has never been a favourite with audiences. How much better it would have been if one heard instead a composition by Liszt who wrote some exceptionally passionate music and was the greatest pianist of the 19th century.
The audience was then treated to the first of the two Chopin pieces. There is always an audible murmur of wonderment whenever a pianist strikes the first few notes of the Fantasie Impromptu in C Sharp Minor. It is a marvellous iridescent construction, light and frothy with rapid demonic semi-quavers; yet it carries a weight of potent feeling. The way the pianist races up the keyboard and down again, with a finale that seems to be squeezing beats in its haste to rush forward, never ceases to fascinate listeners.
Impromptu No 4, Opus 66, which is the registered name of the work, was surprisingly published after the composer’s death. Chopin apparently was not satisfied with the composition, but a bright young spark in the United States certainly was, and turned it into the popular song, I’m Always Chasing Rainbows.
One of Chopin’s famous Polonaises was also given the acupuncture treatment and ended up as another schmaltzy song entitled Till the End of Time. And this great composer suffered the ultimate indignity when a hacker who apparently had a thing about the Poles did a hatchet job with Choppin’ up Chopin. This was the age of classical-bashing when Henry James and Benny Goodman had already made short shrift of Rhimsky-Korsakov.
The second Chopin offering, Ballade No 1 Opus 23, is a moody piece, warm and romantic and reminded one in some ways of the Raindrop Prelude. Usman responded ably to the flights of the composer’s imagination, his sharp-edged phrasing and generally quick unyielding tempi.
Beethoven’s Pastoral Sonata, crackling with energy, was the icing on the cake. The performer handled the work with consummate ease, always alert to the quietly poetic nooks and crannies while stretching the long-sustained melody, and responded to the elegance of the music’s style.
For an encore Usman played the melodious Clair de Lune by Debussy. This richly satisfying piece with its delicate wistful charm and glassy fragility, its idiomatic shading and brilliant points of light, is a great favourite with pianists of all ages. Usman played it with considerable elan, opening the textures with lyrical clarity without any self-conscious imposition. Could it not have been included in the main programme?
It must be mentioned in this context that recitalists, not only in Pakistan but abroad as well, often face that terrifying moment at the piano when philistines in the audience start to applaud between movements in a sonata or a piano concerto, or worse still, when in their view a piece has been concluded and the recitalist would now be reaching for that glass of water. This can destabilize an artist and throw him off balance.
Feroze Buchome and Jehanara Talati often ran into this sudden display of spontaneous enthusiasm and choose to ignore it. Usman, who has also had a taste of the same thing, solved this problem by firmly staying put, gesturing with his right hand that there was more to come and blithely continuing. When a piece did finally come to an end, he would leap up and bow with a note of triumph. Nothing could have been more final than that.
And now a word about scholarships. It would be nice if those foreign countries that dole out small fortunes to further the cause of education in Pakistan, which is often craftily siphoned off by unscrupulous bureaucrats, would put by a small amount for deserving young musicians so they can study in Paris or Vienna.
How nice it would be if somebody like young Usman Anees were to sit in a concert hall in Madrid and was to play The Iberia Suite by Spain’s most prolific composer, Isaac Albeniz. Perhaps it would help to change, however imperceptibly, the awful image people in Europe have of this country.
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