The Big Comeback

Peter Pertis at Strathmore, February 24, 2008

Pianist Peter Pertis traveled a long road to play at the Mansion at Strathmore on Sunday, February 24, 2008, which he was kind enough to talk to me about before the concert. Born in Budapest in 1939, he became a prominent pianist in Communist Hungary before he took an opportunity to leave in 1976.

How did you leave Hungary?

I got an invitation from the Musashino Academy of Music in Tokyo to go to Japan. That was for two years. The Hungary Interconcert was very surprised that I got this invitation from Japan, but they allowed me to go.

I asked, because it was going to be in Japan, to bring my wife and my then-very young son. They told me, "We have to check it with the cultural ministry." I told them, "I'm sorry, if my family cannot come with me for two years to Japan, I am not going to go." After three months, I got the phone call — "Okay, your family is allowed to go."

It would have been different if it had been an invitiation to the Munich Academy or any other part of Europe because that would have been an easy communication and coming back and forth.

What made you decide not to go back to Hungary?

It's very difficult to say, because basically I was in a good position in Hungary. I was allowed to travel, giving concerts all over the world. But I really did not feel free. If somebody said a bad word about me politically, that I talked to someone in Paris, let's say, the next week they would have cut me off from traveling and giving concerts.

I just wanted to say that it was very, very difficult decision. It was not easy for me. Especially my son was six years old, so it was not easy. But I am very glad that we did.

Everything that made me proud in Hungary — being a concert artist, and making recordings, and so on — everything had been erased. They didn't play my recordings, they didn't talk about me, so I just disappeared for a long time.  And I did not go back.

I went back in 1996 and did a recital there, and the [Franz Liszt] Music Academie was really jammed. I got a very very nice review and people enjoyed it and all the newspapers were full of it. It was very nice. In the review I got a little political announcement, which I could not have expected, but it was nice to read — it almost sounded like an apology.

After coming to the U.S. in 1978, he taught and gave concerts until, ten years ago, he retreated from public life to concentrate solely on deepening his musical approach.

I really kind of reached that stage when I wanted to reconsider all of my musical approach and everything whatever around the concertizing and performing. It was very good to be able to find emotionally and physically a new approach for a piece. I was sad that I had to go through this. It was good but not easy. But I am pleased that I came out of it and I am very happy to play.

I have always had a little bit different approach than other pianists, in phrasing, in tempo, and in expression. And for a good while, I showed myself, but not too much, because I wasn't sure if it was good or not, and what would be the opinion of other people. But I have reached the point that I dare to play really whatever is my feeling, my expression.

I make a fantasy of how a composer played a piece first, how was it that Beethoven or Schubert or Mozart played a piece for his friends. I try to take out every single conventional approach, how over the years the piece became more and more standard.

When you're stripping down the piece like that, you must also come out with your own personal interpretation.

Yes, very much so. Somehow I can't really explain it even for myself, but I have a feeling sometimes that, "This must be good. It should be like this." This is a very, very good feeling if you are sure like this.

How were you supporting yourself during your time away?

We had a house in Connecticut, and we sold it. We had also some savings. We live a modest life. Very modest but happy.

At this point in my life I just want to play nicely and give enjoyment to the audience. I don't consider coming to Strathmore a jumping board. I would like to give a nice concert, and I would be open for everything if everything opens for me, or not, I would be happy to give a nice concert.

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Understandably, in the event, Pertis took a while to warm up. In the first movement of the "Pathetique" sonata, he overpedaled Beethoven's stark opening chords, muddying them and lessening their impact. He had consistent technical trouble anytime he had to cross hands, which happens a lot in this sonata, and numerous little quick figurations caused finger slips.

In the glorious set of variations of the sonata's slow movement, at first he poked at the repeated notes so that they broke too far through the texture, like nails under carpet that hadn't been hammered flush with the floor. But somewhere in the third variation the gears caught — the repeated notes and chords became warmer and clearer at once, and the noble melody suddenly appeared spotlit and flowing above them, and you could hear why Pertis had been a famous pianist at one time and place in history.

In the finale, Pertis had some more technical troubles, but he found a nice balance between this music's natural fierceness — you almost can't play this music too fiercely — and the classical profile of the melody from which all the tumult erupts. He never went out of control, but he made his pauses count to increase the tension.

Three Chopin waltzes (the three most famous, in A minor, C-sharp minor, and D-flat) followed as palate-cleansers. Here Pertis played with secure technique, making his surfaces glitter and dim as the music demanded, and he pulled thoughfully at the melodies and teasingly rubato'ed the harmonies. Still, one wanted a bit more of the actual waltz rhythm to come through — there were times when it seemed to be completely forgotten underneath all that sensitivity, and hearing it at the core of those pieces gives them a special poignancy (yes, even the chatterboxy D-flat).

The last two works on the program, Liszt's "Vallee d'Obermann" and Schumann's "Carnaval," found Pertis truly in his element and playing well indeed. (Side note: "Vallee d'Obermann" was the only piece on the program that was not almost painfully familiar. For the big comeback, why not buy yourself a few errors with something by Bartok or Kodaly? No one would notice.) I still don't think "Vallee d'Obermann" is one of Liszt's best, but Pertis, having included it on a recording he made earlier in his career, obviously has a special feeling for it; on Sunday, he made it into an absorbing narrative whose furtive opening gestures blossomed naturally into a wide-open climax, with golden chords ringing our sonorously amid the Mansion's wooden walls.

"Carnaval" poses challenges because its waywardness both propels the work and threatens to break it apart, the whole time; it's interesting to see how different pianists approach the problem of presenting so much lovely music in a coherent fashion. Pertis did relatively little in terms of agogic hesitations or "pianistic" gestures, giving the music a forward momentum in addition to its beauty. Yet this reading did not short-change the glory of Schumann's piano writing; Pertis shaped every melody with feeling and explored every harmonic byway with enthusiasm. Regrettably, Pertis didn't vary his tone-color much between the vignettes, which made their characterizations somewhat less distinct, but this performance still satisfied.

It's tough to come back to doing anything you quit doing a while ago, because the place you're think you're coming back to no longer exists; you've changed, and the world has changed, and you have to find a whole new way of relating the two. Pertis deserves a lot of credit just for trying. Given the course of his life and career, through, it shouldn't be surprising that he ultimately succeeded.

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