(05/26/2009) A first-prize winner of the 1999 Cleveland International Piano Competition and silver medalist of the 2001 Van Cliburn
Antonio Pompa-Baldi played a rich, stirring program in the Rising Star Piano Recital Series on Saturday.
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International Piano Competition, Antonio Pompa-Baldi took the stage at the Southampton Cultural Center on Saturday. Born and raised in Italy, Mr. Pompa-Baldi first came to the United States for the Cleveland competition, and later made that city his home.
Since then he has appeared on four continents as a soloist, a chamber musician, and with orchestras, notably at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing. He is a professor of piano at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and, among many other festivals, has given master classes at Pianofest.
First on the program was the Sonata in C by Johann Nepomuk Hummel, an Austrian who marked the transition from the Classical period to the Romantic. Written when he was only 14, the sonata is rather Mozart-like, showing the influence of one of his teachers. Its nature reflects the composer’s philosophy, “to enjoy the world by giving joy to the world,” presumably articulated at a later age. Mr. Pompa-Baldi’s delivery was solid and cheerful, and at times delicate and playful.
Especially fine was the care given to the small matter of connecting the end of one movement to the beginning of the next without too much pause — somehow the ending of one already anticipated the beginning of the next, thus giving a sense of the three movements as a whole — and this detail carried through the rest of the program as well.
Claude Debussy wrote the “Suite Bergamasque” in 1888, but it wasn’t published until 1903, which is interesting in that in contains one of the most famous of all piano pieces today, “Claire de Lune.” A bergamasca is an Italian peasant dance, and the suite is thought to be based either on a poem by Paul Verlaine that makes reference to it or on Debussy’s recollections of the rustic life of Bergamo in northern Italy. The other three movements are an homage to 17th and 18th-century harpsichordists.
In the opening notes of the Prelude references to the harpsichord could be heard, but we were soon surrounded by the broader swaths of early impressionistic tone, and the playing was abundant with color and clarity.
Mr. Pompa-Baldi, dressed simply in black pants and a black shirt (he said later that he “gave up” wearing a tuxedo quite some time ago, as he is much more comfortable performing this way), had rather economical body movement and facial expression up to this point, with a lot of activity and strength in his hands and arms. Sometimes one could see a gesture of surprise or anticipation as a hand lifted from the keys.
But in the Debussy his facial and bodily expressions came alive, showing delight and excitement with the music. The Menuet had moments of playful humor, and mixed dancelike segments with the composer’s more personal style. At the end of the movement I could hear a number of satisfied “mmms” from the audience.
Although some seasoned concertgoers express indifference at hearing “Claire de Lune” yet again, I thought it was a treat to hear it in context of the whole suite, and Mr. Pompa-Baldi’s rendition of the reflections of moonlight was both elegant and eloquent.
The Passepied (another dance form) returned to the homage theme, closing the suite with a happy, simpler, more Baroque or Medieval-sounding movement.
Launching into the opening fortissimo downward flourish of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Sonata No. 2 in B flat minor, Mr. Pompa-Baldi displayed the full force of the key word in the title of the first movement, Allegro Agitato, or agitated. As is typical of Russian music at the beginning of the 20th century, it is filled with brooding.
Here again Mr. Pompa-Baldi’s movements came alive as he brought out the fullest sounds of the Yamaha piano. I thought that he elicited a different “orchestra” from the instrument as is fitting for each composer and now it was a full symphony. The entire range of the keyboard is called for, but he made the bass sounds of the Yamaha, notably rich throughout the program, nothing less than stirring.
I was most captivated by the second movement, where there seemed to be a constant tension between fragments of a lyrical melody wanting to be heard amid interrupting turbulence, yet he brought us along with assurance as it turned onto different pathways from moment to moment, always with a clear vision of the direction of the music.
With the erratic, driving rhythms of the closing Allegro Molto, Mr. Pompa-Baldi continued to show his command of a style that is enormously complex technically, harmonically, and emotionally. In the latter respect, it is a challenge for the listener as well as the performer, but ultimately it can be deeply fulfilling to experience it; and the artist’s handling and interpretation of it brought the house to its feet.
To satisfy the audience’s request for an encore, Mr. Pompa-Baldi played an etude by Moritz Moszkowski, with lighter, glittering chromatic scales, to round off the evening with a good balance to Rachmaninoff.
Liliane Questel, the director of the Rising Star Piano Recital Series, said she was pleased that the recital brought a “record-breaker attendance” of some 150 people to the last recital of the season, since there were so many events going on over the Memorial Day weekend.
In spite of the name of the series, in view of the fact that Mr. Pompa-Baldi has mentored some of the other pianists who have performed in it, his star “isn’t rising,” she said, “he is a star.”
Information about next season’s events can be found at southamptonculturalcenter.org, or by calling the center at 287-4377.