Martina Filjak
Making Schumann's story her own
September 12, 2013The Croatian pianist Martina Filjak brought ample stamina and interpretive insight to a demanding program that opened the recital series of the San Antonio International Piano Competition, Sept. 7 in St. Mark’s Episcopal Church.
She opened innocently enough with Padre Antonio Soler’s Sonata No. 1 in A, but the the rest of her program represented Romanticism at apogee -- a description that applies even to JS Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in No. 1 in A Minor for Organ, in Franz Liszt’s transcription for piano. The first half closed with Liszt’s huge Ballade No. 2 in B Minor. After intermission came Robert Schumann’s brief romance, Op. 28, No. 2, in F-sharp, and the somewhat neglected Sonata No. 1 in F-sharp minor, a work as flooded with emotional extremes as any by that troubled genius.
Ms. Filjak was most impressive in the Liszt transcription and the two Schumann works. In the former, she suggested the massiveness of the organ pedal points but maintained clarity and nimbleness throughout; her generous and ever-apposite tempo play gave the fugue a strong sense of direction, inexorable movement toward a goal.
There is really only one thing to say about Ms. Filjak’s account of the Schumann works: She played them as though she were telling her own story. The craziness, the occasional frenzy, the dreaminess, the violent emotional clashes all melded into a coherent narrative, the human experience underlying the technical act of performance. The first of her encores, Alexander Scriabin’s aching-heart Prelude for the Left Hand, received similar treatment.
The Liszt Ballade did not elicit quite the same degree of empathy or inevitability, but the performance was certainly bold and exciting. Ms. Filjak seemed to enjoy all those Lisztian thunderrumbles in the left hand.
Mike Greenberg
