Present Music’s Piano Recital

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Photo by Angela Morgan

Present Music isn’t the most likely series to hear a piano recital. Pianist Cory Smythe was astoundingly good in a bold, innovative program he created on Saturday evening at the Cabot Theatre (home of Skylight Music Theatre). He played most of the movements from Robert Schumann’s 20-piece suite Carnaval, improvisations on three of its movements and pieces by Italian composer Salvatore Sciarrino (b. 1947).

Smythe has extraordinary technique and profound fluency, and makes insightful, imaginative statements in his playing. He took the notes, rhythms, articulations and dynamics Schumann composed and created magic with them, finding colors of sound and tone that constantly invited rapt attention.

Smythe’s improvisations on Schumann were brilliant in content and execution, showing deeply considered grasp of the material. Sciarrino’s Perduto una città d’acque (meaning Lost in a City of Water, inspired by Venice), and Due Notturni (two nocturnes) explore the extremes of the keyboard, silence and space. I found this music to be captivating.

In moving without pause from Schumann to improvisation to Sciarrino, there were dramatic juxtapositions and breathtaking moments of contrast. Schumann’s music sounded fresh and different in this context. I heard things in it I had not noticed before, which, of course, was Smythe’s concept.

Schumann’s suite features pieces about commedia dell’arte players, from the Italian traveling troupe tradition, which began in Venice during carnival. Actors/mimes/dancers (I’m not sure what to call them) from the Quasimodo Physical Theatre appeared as the stock character types with Smythe in some pieces, telling stories in movement. I’m not sure what some of the stories were. Maybe that was the point. I found their presence to be strangely engrossing at times, sometimes bewildering and sometimes a distraction. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what I thought about their work and how it fit into the concert, but a day later I’m still thinking about it.

Thrown into the mix of past, present and Italian as an opening surprise teaser, violinist Ilana Setapen gave a rousing account of Niccolò Paganini’s famous Caprice No. 24. The audience, which didn’t come to hear Paganini, after all, cheered her.