Silverman - Beethoven Concert Reviews

Robert Silverman
Beethoven Concert Reviews

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New York

When any pianist can do as much with (Beethoven's Sonata Op. 110) as did Silverman, he need do nothing else. This is a man who can play a page full of notes and make everything sound. It had a rare sense of rightness that both explored its philosophical implications and made the music sing through a wonderful sense of phrase. One of the most remarkable piano events of the entire season. ...New York Post

Toronto

A deeper intensity than one is accustomed to hearing ... Beethoven playing of a high order. The (Op. 31/2) first movement's phantom arpeggios and desolate recitatives erupted in ferocity and the finale's obsessive perpetual motion was powerfully rendered. The slow movement (of the Hammerklavier Sonata) was the high point of the evening. In response to Beethoven's call for grand expression, Silverman managed to invest its expanse with an unusual operatic urgency. A recollection of Dylan Thomas's raging against the dying of the light, it was wonderfully moving. ...The Globe and Mail

Seattle

Most rewarding of all was the Hammerklavier, Beethoven's biggest and thorniest piano sonata, and always a monumental challenge to interpretation (as well as to technique). This sonata is a huge journey, sometimes unhurried and sometimes violently agitated. In Silverman's hands, the journey had a clear and inexorable direction, building adroitly to climaxes and developing the phrases with a telling clarity. This sonata can be thrilling, especially in the bravura flourishes, which Silverman executed as a formidable wall of sound (in the second and fourth movements). The real thrills, however, came in the lengthy third movement, which sounded almost Chopinesque in parts, and which moved Saturday from moments of a velvety softness that was almost palpable to abruptly defused violence, with a drama that never flagged. You don't hear playing of this caliber often.

Then, Silverman launched into a performance of the Appassionata. It was a revelation. This was the kind of playing that sweeps you along, from the quietly menacing opening to tender phrasing and explosive cataclysms of sound. Silverman cuts no corners, takes no shortcuts; takes no prisoners; he doesn't smear up the performance with pedal or shove one note into another in sloppy arpeggios. The final movement was hair-raising: rigorous, explosive, but played so evenly that you could hear every note. ...Seattle Times

Washington, D.C.

In matters of ultimate concern, his playing is on the deepest of levels. ...Washington Post

Winnipeg

Silverman scales Everest, leaves audience on a high
Beethovens emotional state springs to life

Though his opening concert Thursday night had the requisite feats of prodigious memory, unfaltering fingers and stamina to spare, it was Silvermans ability to illuminate Beethoven's vast array of emotional states and guide them from within which won the day. One never sensed effect as an end, but rather as an instinctive regard for what was already there and how to make it live. In a major and magnificent way, Silvermans clarity of thought had us looking past the messenger. In every phrase, one viewed the interpreter through the music rather than the music through the interpreter. ...Free Press