Charlie Albright
Classical music concerts don’t always have to be serious. Nevertheless, there was some serious playing by twenty-something Charlie Albright in an informal piano recital at Schwan Hall at Wisconsin Lutheran College last week. Albright spoke casually and with charm before each selection to create a fun evening.
Albright graduated from Harvard in economics and pre-med, then followed that with two degrees in music. He is on a self-driving tour of the Midwest, with 15 recitals in eight states in 22 days. That takes not only endurance but no small dose of bravery, and youth doesn’t hurt. There is a touch of show biz in him, performing a lavishly difficult arrangement of Johann Strauss’ Blue Danube and a crazy take on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Turkish March. Like every young lion at the keyboard these days it seems, Albright tackled the written-out bebop jazz in Variations, Op. 41, of Russian composer Nikolai Kapustin (b. 1937) with style.
The light-hearted mood was spelled with the gloom of the first movement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata in the first half, with the angst of the final movement convincingly played after intermission. Albright described Franz Liszt’s fiendishly hard La Campanella as target practice for the pianist. He hit bullseye after bullseye.
Classical improvisation is almost a lost art. Albright asked the audience for four notes, then on the spot conjured up a lush improvisation that sounded like Chopin meets Liszt meets Rachmaninoff. The glitz factor came back with flashy improvisation on Chopsticks, which Albright admitted he first heard Liberace do on YouTube.
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Later in the week I heard another pianist, but one in mid-career and full maturity. I don’t think the Steinway at Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra has ever sounded more beautiful than when French Canadian Louis Lortie played Mozart’s final piano concerto, No. 27. The sophisticated elegance and grace of the phrasing was magical. I felt entranced by the crystalline ring of the treble range played with such easy fluidity. A friend at intermission called it sublime, and I’m going to steal her word for what we heard. I’ll also add transcendent and heavenly.
