Pianism Perfect
By Paul Haist
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A friend once said that before she was accepted into a graduate program in music at Northwestern she was obliged, among other prerequisites to admission, to demonstrate at the piano that she could play a minimum number of notes in a specific period of time, rather like a typist of yore being required to type, say, 60 words a minute.
The ability to play many notes quickly recalls the scene in "Amadeus" in which Mozart patron Emperor Joseph II has just heard the composer debut a new score.
"My dear young man, don't take it too hard," the emperor tells Mozart. "Your work is ingenious. It's quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that's all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect."
One does not doubt that concert pianist Sara Davis Buechner could master the Mozart piece featured in that memorable scene, if she has not already done so in her repertoire of more than 100 concertos and extensive selection of solo and concert pieces.
Likewise, if The Julliard School required a test of prospective piano students like that at Northwestern,
Buechner can play more notes per second than most people can count, and she does it in a way that brings tears to one's eyes. She seems a consummate artist at the peak of her power and
intimately in touch with that which lives within the music she plays that makes that music seem to us celestial in its majesty and dominion.
She brings to her art a keen intellect, an infectious joy and an instantly engaging sense of humor.
Buechner came to Portland this month as a featured artist at the ninth annual Portland International Piano Festival.
We were invited to hear her perform at the World Forestry Center the evening of July 12, and then to hear her lecture the next day about "Crossover Classics of Tin Pan Alley." At the lecture, she accompanied herself at the grand piano.
We were invited—this is the requisite Jewish connection—because Buechner grew up Jewish in Baltimore. At least three Jewish composers also were featured in her performances over her two days in Portland—George Gershwin, Rudolph Friml and Pauline Alpert.
On the evening of her recital, Buechner opened her program with Bach's "Partita No. 6" in E minor, the Egon Petri rendition from Vol. 10 of Farruccio Bussoni's 1919 "Well Tempered Clavier."
For us who might not recall that once controversial and now mostly overlooked arrangement, Buechner's own program notes remind us that it is "a highly personal vision of this Baroque masterpiece, which employs great artistic license" but remains, in Buechner's view, "a vision quite full of beauty, and a timely message that should not be neglected due to excessive concerns over propriety."
Much of that is lost on one who struggles with a ukulele. But in our first exposure to Buechner's gift we were awe-struck and deeply moved by the power, the stark emotion and the drama of her performance.
Her performance was marked by a seemingly uncontrived theatricality that revealed and underscored an intensely intimate connection between musician and music, between musician and composer.
From the Bach, Buechner moved on to Jacques Ibert's "Histoires pour Piano," numbering ten short compositions that the performer called "miniature masterpieces." In Buechner's hands they seemed to echo with a poignancy that arises from the Paris of our dreams.
Buechner is a self-acknowledged Japanophile, a Japanese language student and an avid fan of the Osaka Tigers baseball team. She has traveled extensively in Japan where she now has piano students.
The final two composers featured in her recital were Japanese. Buechner performed "Quiet Beach" and "Rain" by her former student Yukiko Nishimura, and the darkly impassioned "Sonata for Piano" by Yoshinao Nakada.
The latter piece, composed in 1949, is especially interesting owing to its composer's past as a kamikaze pilot in World War II.
Known widely in Japan for his innocent children's folk songs, Nakada's "Sonata for Piano" is haunting and troubling in its emotional depth.
Kamikaze pilots who survived the war, the musician tells us, "often confronted a tangled wall of personal shame for having not properly perished in service to the emperor."
One who has not heard the piece prior to Buechner's performance here can't say whether the anguish one hears in "Sonata for Piano" would be there no matter what gifted pianist might perform the piece, but if that is what Nakada wanted us to hear, then Buechner was a perfect instrument to communicate his tangled emotions in what was a devastatingly heart-wrenching performance.
Buechner extracts from her instrument a range of tones that suggests one is listening to more than a piano. Sometimes one hears a single note resonate for seconds during which that one vibrating string becomes a woodwind. It is magical.
In her lecture the next day, Buechner challenged the view that some luminaries of popular American music in the early 20th century—George Gershwin, Rudolph Friml, Zez Confrey, Pauline Alpert, among others—were "crossover" musicians who toiled in an undefined space between proper and acceptable European music and the widely socially unacceptable ragtime of the era.
She performed several well-known "novelty" songs such as "Nola," "Narcissus," "Sweet and Lowdown" and "You Tell 'em Ivories," often and skillfully employing a stride left hand and lots of impressive work with her hands crossed over the keys, which amused both the pianist and her audience, which chiefly comprised piano teachers and advanced students.
Her conclusion was that it is a mistake to place the so-called crossover composers between two musical forms.
"They were not crossover artists at all, but wonderful entertainers," said Buechner.
Buechner made New York her home for much of her career. She recently accepted a teaching post at the University of British Columbia in Victoria.
She is a major prize winner of many of the world's most prestigious piano competitions and she has appeared as a soloist with America's most prominent orchestras including the New York Philharmonic and the hugely distinguished symphony orchestras of Philadelphia, Cleveland, St. Louis and San Francisco. She has performed abroad with many of the foremost international orchestras from Japan to Europe.
Buechner has released CDs. Her recording of the music of George Gershwin was a Stereophile magazine CD of the month.
The New York Times said of this pianist, "Buechner has it all—intelligence, integrity and all-encompassing technical prowess." The Washington Post said, "Buechner's performance had a beauty that might have taken even Mozart's breath away."
Since moving to Canada, Buechner has developed a wide following there, and praise much like what she has received in this country.
Boris Brott, who conducts the McGill Chamber Orchestra in Montreal, the National Academy Orchestra of Canada in Ontario, and the New West Symphony in Thousand Oaks, Calif., said after a recent performance by Buechner of Beethoven's "Piano Concerto No.1" in Ontario, "Sara is truly one of the great pianists of our time."
Among those who heard Buechner in Portland was Portland Chamber Orchestra Conductor and Music Director Maestro Yaakov Bergman.
In an e-mail after he heard her perform, Bergman told Buechner's publicist, "She is amazing, so knowledgeable and plays so well. I did see her after. We will talk soon about future collaboration."
Learn more about Sara Buechner and buy her CDs at sarabuechner.com.