MASSICOTTE’S DYNAMIC PALETTE DELIVERS FIRE
Saturday was a busy night on the classical scene in the Capital. The choices included a Messiah at St. Matthew’s Anglican Church, an all-Brahms recital with NACO principal viola Jethro Marks and U of O profs Paul Marleyn (cello) and Mauro Bertoli (piano), a solo piano recital by a young upand-comer from Montreal, and another instalment in NACO’s “off-Southam” WolfGANG sessions hosted by the Mercury Lounge, not to mention concerts in Gatineau and Kanata.
Local concert presenter and pianist Roland Graham is filling a necessary niche in Ottawa with his Masters Piano Recital Series at Southminster United Church. Graham’s presentation of the Montreal pianist Steven Massicotte at Tabaret Hall on Saturday wasn’t technically part of his bigger series, but shared its general theme of showcasing younger artists playing the great repertoire.
Massicotte, 28, recently returned to Montreal after a fruitful 18-month sojourn in Vienna. He has impressive technique, with a fat, warm, glossy sound. He’s also a thoughtful and intelligent musician. Haydn’s late C major Sonata was all smiles and good humour, but the pianist also gave it an intriguing heft that looked toward Romanticism and Haydn’s pupil, Beethoven.
Massicotte’s performance of Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 109 was fiery and resolute. The theme of the final movement was stated with disarming simplicity — the quality was more wistful than melancholy. The long, trilling crescendo in the penultimate variation was extremely convincing, not note-perfect but artfully constructed, the tension holding until exactly the right moment.
Liszt’s epic B Minor Sonata — one of the monuments of Romantic piano music — had more problems. Massicotte seemed nervous and tight, as if he were trying to exert too much control, and the dramatic opening was a bit of a hot mess. But once he settled into a groove and started breathing easier, the piece really began to soar on the pianist’s expansive dynamic palette, imaginative voicing and exciting narrative.
I also caught the last half of the sold-out WolfGANG event at the Mercury Lounge. Sean Rice astonished with Blood Moon, a deliciously creepy, alien showstopper for solo bass clarinet by German composer Johannes Maria Staud. Bryce Dessner’s impassioned string quartet composition Aheym got a gutsy, take-no-prisoners performance by Jessica Linnebach, Carissa Klopoushak, David Marks and Julia MacLaine.