Francesco Tristano Schlimé at Weill Recital Hall, February 1, 2008

As promised, I attended Francesco Tristano Schlimé’s New York debut last night. He’s the real deal, although I’m not sure if he is going to be to everyone’s taste.

For the record, let me state that my preference in piano playing is for personality, even if it risks eccentricity. Technical mastery is all well and good, but I prefer touch, expression, sensibility. Schlimé is technically assured (although I wouldn’t want to account for the clarity of all of his passagework). More importantly, though, he brings a forceful presence to every piece he plays, an acute point of view that gives his readings uniqueness and power.

He started the program with Cinque variazioni, an early piece by Luciano Berio, and which he played from memory (not always a given with modern music). Schlimé is superb at bringing out contrasts, and this music, in which a lyrical tendency fights with percussive attacks, was tailor-made for him. In Schlimé’s hands it flowed with mesmerizing beauty.

In a provocative move, Schlimé launched into his next set of pieces, three toccatas by Frescobaldi, without a break. The effect was startling, but not in an ugly way; I was more impressed by how apposite the pairing was. Schlimé may have angered some purists by using some heavy pedal effects in these ancient pieces; to my ear, the pedal gave the music spaciousness and heft. The last of the three, in F major, from Frescobaldi’s second book of toccatas, is a contrapuntal tour-de-force that seems to have held no terrors for the young pianist.

The program continued with Bach’s French Suite No. 4 (BWV 815); Schlimé gave the dance-like rhythms real point and, in the final, hair-raising Gigue, once again showed off his technical flair. I did not detect his using the pedal in these pieces, but I could be wrong.

The first half finished with a remarkable piece, Technology, a realization (by Schlimé) of an electronic work by the techno-music composer Carl Craig, whom I am too ignorant in these matters to have heard of before. It started with a series of chime-like figures; this was followed by a transitional passage in which a repeated bass note was punctuated by some manipulation of the piano string by the pianist: Schlimé reached into the piano and produced a rising scale of eerie overtones by plucking the string, all the while sounding that bass note. By keeping his foot on the pedal, the resonance created an aural background, like the swooshing of traffic in the rain. This led to a jazzy ostinato in the bass that eventually grounded the triumphant return of the chime-like music of the opening.

The second half of the program opened with a work by a young composer, Justin Messina, called NYTectonics: 4 City Bridges. (The bridges are the Verrazano, the Queensborough, the Triboro, and the Brooklyn.) The four components do not need be played in any particular order, and the codas and introductory measures of each are meant to played in an overlapping way. I can’t say whether the bridges were being musically described, or whether they were simply used as evocative points of inspiration. Verrazano was characterized by a continuous drone of seconds; Queensborough was jazzy, with syncopated rhythms and blue notes. It was music by a promising young composer who managed to incorporate disparate elements without sounding easily eclectic.

It made me think, also, of Hart Crane. His bridge, like Schlimé’s piano (and aesthetic), is a living link between epochs, genres, cultures. There is a welcome idealism in this kind of time-and-space-bending enterprise.

Schlimé then performed Haydn’s sonata in C (Hob. XVI:48), a two-movement work that opens with a theme and variations marked “andante con espressione,” here played in a manner that I imagine many would consider all wrong—heavy and dramatic, rather than light of touch and “objective,” as is the custom these days with this kind of music. I liked his approach, though. How else to convey the chromatic richness of the variations, if not investing it with layers of feeling? He took the presto finale fiercely, ending with an exciting flourish.

Schlimé is also a composer, and he finished the scheduled program with a short, tonic work by Berio, Wasserklavier, and an improvisation on the same, in which, upon Berio’s harmonic platform, he built a veritable skyscraper, shimmering in intensity.

As though this wasn’t impressive enough, Schlimé gave as an encore a composition of his own, a short piece called Melody (I think), which rarely moved above middle C, and featured an insistent, tango-like ostinato in the bass.

Afterward, there was a complimentary reception, with an abundance of food and wine, at which Schlimé met with the audience. I overcame my habitual shyness and managed to shake his hand and utter some words of congratulation. (He also told me what the encore was, as he did not announce it from the stage.) He addressed his well wishers in several languages, and he seemed polite and not at all touched by the kind of pretentiousness that one might expect.

It’s rare to hear the piano played so expertly and intelligently, imbued with both grandeur and a keen intellect. They don’t always go together. It was also, musically, one of the most satisfying recitals I have heard, mixing music from different eras and avoiding overplayed concert staples. Let us hope for a speedy return of Francesco Tristano Schlimé to New York.

Music Keeps You Young

These two stories were side by side in the print edition of today's Times: Tony Martin still singing at 95 (and still married to the great Cyd Charisse), and Elliot Carter, still going at 100.

Le Pays-off

It may have taken a hundred years or so, but Joseph Guy Ropartz, Magnard's close friend and a man who seems not to have suffered from the egomania that afflicts so many creative artists, may be coming into his own. Le Pays, his only opera, has bowed in Tours, and the response has been enthusiastic--to judge from this review. I'm not getting my hopes up of its being performed here, but there is a recording.

Why the News about Statins Isn't News

With the latest brouhaha over the cholesterol-lowering statin drugs--summarized in today's Times--it might be instructive to return to a 2005 interview with Nortin Hadler that appeared in Discover. Hadler is a professor of medicine at Chapel Hill (and the author of The Last Well Person) whose sharp-eyed, statistical-based assessments lead him to hold contrarian opinions on conventional medical wisdom. Here is the part about statins:

"Discover: Surgery is obviously invasive, but why do you object to the widespread prescription of statins, the cholesterol-lowering drugs?

"H: In men with normal cholesterol levels, the risk of death for those between ages 45 and 65 over the course of the next five years is only a fraction of 1 percent lower than it is for men with high serum cholesterol in the same category. The most thorough study to date had some 3,000 men with 'high' cholesterol levels take a statin every day for five years, while 3,000 similar men took a placebo. When all was said and done, there was no difference in cardiovascular deaths between the two groups. Statins do reduce the risk of heart attack in those who have a strong family history of people in their family having heart attacks very young—but that’s a small percentage of the population. You could argue, looking at the data, that they’re helpful for people who’ve already had one heart attack. But for everyone else, the possible advantage is marginally and clinically insignificant.

"Discover: You’re 62—do you get your cholesterol checked?

"H: I don’t want to know. We have data that tell me if you stigmatize me by labeling me somehow, it will change my sense of well-being. I have nothing to gain from that in this case. I would be infuriated if any doctor checked my cholesterol without my asking and told me if it was up or down. I would think that would be an abuse of science that offered me a chance of feeling less well for no good reason."

The interview is worth reading in its entirety, especially for Hadler's comments on what's really behind prolonged life expectancy.

But the point is, this "news" about statins isn't really news. Statins lower cholesterol but don't prolong life. Should that not make everyone reconsider the relationship between cholesterol and health?

I'm a Mauvais Garcon!

Today I just found out--although it may well have been up for a while--that I am on the blogroll of none other than the great Vilaine Fille! As a fan of the blog, as well as its blogeuse, the smart, learned and magnamimous Marion Lignana Rosenberg, I can't say how delighted I am. I feel as though I've arrived.

Yo, Caroline, Whachu Got Against da Bronx?

Last week, in connection with some research I was conducting for a possible book, I took the IND up to the Bronx--specifically, to the corner of the Grand Concourse and Fordham Road. (Not my first time in that vicinity, by the way.)

That part of the Bronx is primarily African-American and Latino. It's a lower middle-class neighborhood with a lot of hard-working people. Not far from that intersection is Fordham University. A little further away is the old Italian enclave whose center is on Arthur Ave. To the west is Riverdale, where many of the borough's Jews live.

There's a lot of energy on the Grand Concourse: national chains as well as local enterprises along the storefronts; guys hawking things on the sidewalks; the bustle of thousands of people racing from one place to the next.

My point is that the Bronx is New York City through and through.

So I was somewhat startled to see that according to a recent post by Caroline Fourest, Nicolas Sarkozy's endorsement of the religious yearnings of the general public would result, five years hence, in the French president's being sworn in on the Bible, while "our suburbs will look like the Bronx."

I don't know if Caroline Fourest has been to the Bronx--I'd be delighted to take her to lunch on Arthur Avenue should she like to visit--but no doubt she is thinking of the urban blight of the South Bronx of decades past, symbolized by vacant lots and burning slums.

The Bronx of today, a place where people from different backgrounds, of different faiths and no faith, live and work together, more peacefully than not, might well be a model towards which the French banlieues should aspire. It is hardly the "social desert" that she thinks it is.