Date: February 14, 2005
see also: Press release | Bio | Concert

Barbara Nissman

On Sunday afternoon, February 13, pianist Barbara Nissman played the second of her two recitals (the same program each time) at Le Petit Trianon in San Jose for a large and enthusiastic audience. This event was presented by “Steinway Society, The Bay Area” (now celebrating its tenth anniversary with yet another stellar season).

We hear all kinds of pianists these days — some are academic and fussy, some are introverted and ultra careful, some are absolutely literal and boring, and then there are those who are bold and larger than life. Such a pianist is Ms. Nissman.  Her playing does not reflect modern performance practice, but rather harkens back to the age of great titans like Franz Liszt, Anton Rubinstein, and Ferruccio Busoni. It is not so much that she takes liberties with the text, as these great artists did, but that her playing has a grandiose style that tends to reject moderation and restraint so that fortes become fortissimo, allegros become prestos and prestos become prestissimo (Hello, Guinness Book of Records, we have a new world’s speed record for the last movement of the “Moonlight” Sonata). Are these changes effective, or do they imply a preoccupation with virtuosity at the expense of musical values?

The answer to this question depends for a large part on the sophistication of the listener. Those intimately familiar with the scores played by Ms. Nissman might roll their eyes at hearing the sotto voce, delicatissimo cadenza on the next-to-last page of the Chopin D-flat Nocturne played forte and fast as possible, or the melody in the glorious last pages of the C Minor Chopin Nocturne being obscured by the pounding out of the accompanying texture and bass. However, there is a visceral excitement in Ms. Nissman’s virtuosity, and it was this element that seemed to appeal to the audience during this recital.

In all fairness to her, the intimacy of Le Petit Trianon, a small hall seating approximately 250, with its live acoustics, worked against her, and the performance we heard Sunday afternoon would have been more effective in Carnegie Hall (seating 2700) or the Royal Albert Hall (seating 6,000).

Nevertheless, there is much to admire in Ms. Nissman’s total command at the keyboard and her absolute self confidence in projecting a strong conception of every work she performed. The great Liszt B Minor Sonata had some lovely tender moments in its middle section, anotoriously difficult section for the artist to keep the audience’s attention from wandering, and its outer more virtuoso sections were a marvel of technical security and a clear artistic understanding of their structural values. Similarly, her performance of Liszt’s “Spanish Rhapsody” was admirable for its technical mastery and made a splendid effect. Her performance of both these large-scaled works put enormous strains on the lovely Steinway D concert grand owned by Le Petit Trianon, but the instrument came through unscathed.

The three Rachmaninoff Etudes-Tableaux suffered somewhat from being pounded out in thestyle of Prokofiev at his most percussive (Rachmaninoff himself never produced an ugly sound). However, each had moments of beauty. Speaking of “moments of beauty,” her performance of the first movement of Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata was truly lovely and was proof of what a subtle colorist Ms. Nissman can be when she so chooses. We heard another example of this subtlety and refinement in the Argentinean Dance No. 2 she offered as an encore. Together with the third Argentinean Dance, these were performances that simply couldn’t be bettered.

So, the bottom line is that Barbara Nissman is the “complete pianist” who has the facility to play absolutely anything with the greatest of ease, but her preoccupation with virtuosity tended to produce performances of painful intensity.