Adelaide Festival. Elder Hall. 13 Mar 2025

 

As part of the Adelaide Festival’s Daylight Express Series at the Elder Hall, Finnish piano virtuoso Paavali Jumppanen performed two behemoths from the piano literature: Pierre Boulez’s Piano Sonata No.2, and Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-flat Major, Op. 106 (Hammerklavier). We are reliably informed this is the first time these two works have been presented together in an Australian concert hall, and it is no surprise. Neither work is for the faint hearted, and Finnish virtuoso Paavali Jumppanen is clearly not that. The two compositions, when paired in a single performance, present an Everest of a challenge to the performer, and Paavali Jumppanen is both Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay rolled into one. Not only are the two works fiendishly difficult to play, but they also make huge demands on the listener.

 

Scholars have sometimes compared the two compositions due to their extreme technical demands, structural complexity, and radical rethinking of musical form. Both works push the limits of what was considered possible on the piano in their respective times, embodying an uncompromising, forward-thinking approach to composition. (The Beethoven was composed in 1818 and the Boulez in 1947-48.)

 

Both sonatas demand virtuosic technique and stamina. The Hammerklavier is one of Beethoven’s most difficult piano works, requiring extraordinary control, power, and endurance. It expands the classical sonata form to monumental proportions and includes a fugue in the final movement that pushes counterpoint to almost breaking point. Boulez’s Piano Sonata No. 2 is also notorious for its extreme technical challenges, including rapid tempo shifts, complex rhythms, and dense textures. Although titled a sonata, it barely follows the expected path and incorporates serialism and pseudo-randomness. The Beethoven is tonal, melodic, and formal, whereas the Boulez is atonal, melodies are ephemeral and never developed, and there is no attempt at harmony. Like the Beethoven, it too breaks with rules and traditions that were current at the time they were composed.

 

To play them requires not only exquisite technique, which Jumppanen has in abundance, but also a deep understanding of musical structure and form, even knowing that both are sacred cows about to be slaughtered. The Beethoven is deeply expressive and dramatic, and both lyrical and grand, whereas the Boulez is cold and severe. Their connection lies in their boldness – each piece, in its own era, was a radical redefinition of what a piano sonata could be.

 

When Jumppanen first came on stage he fixed his eyes on the Steinway, barely acknowledged the audience, and launched into his performance. He was playing before he was barely seated! For those in the audience who had prior experience with the Boulez, which was listed first in the program, it was clear that he wasn’t playing it, and nor was it the Beethoven. A few short minutes later he finished and directly spoke to the audience announcing that he played an encore first, because he often forgot to do so! (It was Debussy’s Etude No.7.) Looking back on what was to come, there could be no encore after performing both the Boulez and the Beethoven, which together account for nearly 80 minutes of the most intense, athletic, intellectual and dynamic pianism one could ever wish to experience. Jumppanen used music for the Boulez, and the page turner (the inimitable Esmond Choi, a local star in the making) was up and down every thirty-five seconds. Using the printed music is perfectly understandable: how could one possibly remember it? The human mind constantly seeks structure against which to organise thoughts and remember, but the Boulez defies all that. On the other hand, Jumppanen played the Beethoven from memory, all eleven-hundred-and-sixty-plus bars of it, coming in at around forty-six minutes!

 

At the end of the concert, barely before the sounds of the crushing final fortissimo B-flat major chord began to fade, the audience leapt to their feet almost as one and enthusiastically applauded, cheered, whistled and shouted “bravo!” at what was undoubtedly an extraordinary pianistic and musical feat. One member of the audience within earshot of this reviewer could be overheard to remark that this was surely the highlight of the festival. A big call, but a big and important concert too! People will talk about this one for months to come, and rightly so.

 

Kym Clayton

 

When: 13 Mar

Where: Elder Hall

Bookings: Closed