July 26, 2012
by Michael J. Moran
 |
| Pianist Gerhard Oppitz |
Brahms completists had a rare opportunity last month to hear
every piece that composer wrote for solo piano in a series of four concerts
over two weeks by the protean German pianist Gerhard Oppitz. By mixing longer,
shorter, earlier and later works, each program showcased not only the soloist’s
staggering virtuosity but the remarkable variety of Brahms’s piano music. At
the age of 59, Oppitz also bears an uncanny physical resemblance to familiar
images of the composer around that age.
His approach to Brahms combined the deep, resonant tone of
Claudio Arrau with the lighter keyboard touch of Julius Katchen, the first
pianist to record all of Brahms’s solo piano works, as Oppitz has also done.
His tempos were steady but flexible, always striking a perfect balance between
youthful abandon and mature restraint, according to the particular piece he was
playing. His use of rubato was sparing and carefully judged, honoring Brahms
the classicist as well as Brahms the romantic.
The ease with which Oppitz played even the most challenging
repertoire, like the symphonically-scaled “Sonata No. 3” and both books of the
“Variations on a Theme by Paganini,” may stem from his already having performed
the complete Brahms cycle a number of times. But familiarity didn’t keep him
from revealing fresh insights even in some of the most popular works, like the
dramatic “Two Rhapsodies” and the exuberantly Viennese “Sixteen Waltzes.”
The most impressive moments of these concerts may have been
the rapt attention Oppitz commanded from the audience during quieter pieces,
like the meditative intermezzi among the four sets of piano miniatures that
Brahms wrote in his final years. It’s hard to imagine that any other pianist
could have expressed the melting lyricism of Op. 118, No. 2 or the eerie
desolation of the “Dies Irae” theme in Op. 118, No. 6 more compellingly.
Oppitz’s monumental achievement was further enhanced not
only by the marvelous acoustics of Ozawa Hall, which allowed every note to be
clearly heard, but also by the extensive and detailed program notes about each
musical selection by Brahms biographer Jan Swafford.
