{TABLE} Ich ruf zu Dir ....................... Bach/Busoni Wachet auf ........................... Bach/Busoni Nun komm' der Heide Heiland .......... Bach/Busoni Bagatelles Op 126 .................... Beethoven Fantasia Op 28 ....................... Mendelssohn Sonetti del Petrarea 47,104,123 ...... Liszt Dante Sonata ......................... Liszt Reminiscences de Don Juan ............ Liszt {/TABLE} ENRICO Pace's programme at the NCH last night could be viewed as a set of musical travels. At either end of the evening there were travels back in time, Busoni engaging with three of Bach's chorale preludes to produce a spirituality both severe and hauntingly sensual; Liszt meeting Mozart in the Spain of Don Giovanni for some fanciful refashioning in a spirit of exuberant romanticism; and the second half of the programme also presented the fruits of Liszt's Italian travels, as documented in his Annees de Pelerinage.
Mendelssohn was another composer who took musical sustenance from the Mediterranean, but his F sharp minor Fantasia took us to a more northerly source of foreign inspiration - the piece, written when Mendelssohn was in his early twenties, is known as his Scottish Sonata. There's no overt travel reference in Beethoven's final set of Bagatelles; but these concentrated and exploratory pieces are strongly suggestive of a musical future which Beethoven would not live to travel in.
The Italian pianist Enrico Pace (playing in a concert promoted by the NCH and the Italian Cultural Institute to mark the Italian Presidency of the European Union) proved a beguiling and resourceful guide. He related more readily to the gravitas of Busoni's Bach transcriptions than to the elusive, firm core of the Beethoven - the unforced linear highlighting which comes so readily to him was not the asset in Beethoven that it was in the chorale preludes, fleetness and delicacy, yet, predictably perhaps, it seemed constrained and four square by comparison with the tangled, tumultuous emotions and rich pianistic invention of the Liszt that followed. Pace plays Liszt as if the bravura is all incidental. He has the virtuosity and the visionary musicianship to make one hang on every last note of these familiar warhorses. One can but wonder why it's been over twos years since he was last heard in Ireland.
