Pianist Christopher Guzman
Rising star, en route to Tongyeong
October 25, 2008Back in 1996, when pianist Christopher Guzman was a freshman at the Keystone School in San Antonio, he turned heads with a confident, exuberant account of the first movement of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the San Antonio Youth Philharmonic.
Now he’s pursuing a doctorate at UT-Austin and earning praise from exalted quarters: Anton Nel has said that Guzman is "in a class by himself" among current UT students, and one of the best Nel has ever taught. In his first doctoral recital, Oct. 23 in Bates Recital Hall, Guzman delivered intelligent, assured performances of a wide range of very demanding material. The program held works he’s taking with him to the Tongyeong International Music Competition in South Korea.
Guzman’s most interesting performance came, somewhat surprisingly, in Beethoven’s Op. 109 Sonata. In the late sonatas of Beethoven, the challenge is not so much technical, or even musical, as biographical. One needs considerable life experience, and not a few scars, to converse with this music. Twice Guzman’s age is not necessarily the minimum price of admission, but it helps. Nonetheless, I think Guzman engaged meaningfully with Op. 109 and suggested progress toward a distinctive point of view about it. The first movement was ruminative, but also uncommonly lyrical and fluid, understating the angularity and nuttiness in this music. The prestissimo was notable mainly for some very nice voicings. Guzman stated the finale’s theme with a direct simplicity that conveyed an ocean of feeling. In the variations that followed, Guzman massaged the tempo and shaped the line in ways that revealed much, but sometimes he revealed by concealing -- pushing straight ahead, for example, in certain passages that almost demand more deliberate rhetoric and stood out by their reticence.
Guzman opened with big, spirited account of a remarkable contemporary work, Frederic Rzewski’s “Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues,” which begins with a long, motoric growl that slowly rises from the lowest register and attains a manic, if not psychotic, pitch before edging into the song’s traditional form. The preliminaries include a left-hand ostinato that goes on forever and must be exhausting to play.
In Ravel’s “Scarbo” and Scriabin‘s “White Mass” Sonata, Guzman showed a fine command of color and, to my ear, an interest in the specifically pianistic (for want of a better term) qualities of the music -- the zone where the abstract idea meets the materiality of the instrument and the means for making it sound. Fragrant and colorful accounts of two pieces from the “Goyescas” of Enrique Granados closed the recital.
Mike
Greenberg
