Stephen Manes’ trip into ‘Fantasy World’ of piano is a wonderful journey
Pianist Stephen Manes has been a creative musical force in Western New York for quite some time, and it has almost always been a pleasure to see what sounds he would coax from the keyboard. His repertoire is fairly diverse, ranging from standards of the Classical and Romantic eras to the kinds of cutting edge modern music showcased most notably during the yearly June In Buffalo programs.
His concert Wednesday night in Lippes Concert Hall was called “Fantasy World” and dealt with scores that sounded almost improvisatory in their execution. There was structure present in these works, but it still felt as if the composers were responding to a loose guideline rather than a tightly knit schematic.
Manes’ set list for the evening dipped into the catalogs of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert for some familiar favorites before unveiling a work by Lionel Nowak (Manes’ first piano teacher) and concluding with a brief encore composed by Johannes Brahms.
It was another display of the pianist’s talents and eclectic tastes, covering well-known masterpieces and placing them in the company of a lesser-known, more unconventional piece of music.
Mozart’s “Fantasie” in C minor (K. 475) began the program with the composer’s typical dramatic flair, co-mingling power and delicacy that called upon the pianist’s ability to control rhythms and sonic colors through the mediums of expressive phrasing and the subtle use of the foot pedals.
Some of those same elements were required for the eight sections of Schumann’s “Kreisleriana,” where Manes caused playful storms to ebb and flow across the keyboard.
In true Romantic fashion, Schumann’s dark intellect had built this “fantasie” with a combination of jubilation, resignation and acceptance, and Manes delivered the emotional complexities behind the music with considerable elan.
Nowak’s six-minute exercise in serial techniques meshed five movements into an unbroken whole, and, while Manes obviously has a feel for this particular composer, it wasn’t hard to see why this 1954 work hasn’t differentiated itself from the multitude of other 12-tone works from that era.
Manes’ gorgeous rendition of Schubert’s “Wanderer Fantasy” was the closing feature for the night and well worth the wait.
This was a true masterpiece and it was played with a beguiling mixture of respect and flair. The same thing can be said for the pianist’s encore, a delightful excerpt from Brahms’ Op. 116 that proved to be the perfect topper for a generally wonderful evening.
Concert Review
Stephen Manes
Wednesday night in Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall on University at Buffalo North Campus, Amherst.
