With its genteel air and stately elegance, the intimate, salonlike music room of the Frick Collection may not look particularly hip. But it’s perfect for the iPod generation, offering intense surround sound, minus the hearing damage.
Leon McCawley performing a program of Hans Gál, Mozart, Schubert and Rachmaninoff at the Frick Collection on Sunday.
Readers’ Opinions
The room’s unusually reverberant acoustics highlighted the eloquently full-blooded approach of Leon McCawley, the 33-year-old British pianist, Curtis graduate and multiple competition laureate, who made his New York recital debut on Sunday at the Frick.
Mr. McCawley began his program with a spirited and almost romantic reading of Mozart’s Sonata in D (K. 311), with long, expressive phrases and a liberal use of rubato. There weren’t many dynamic contrasts, but he offered plenty in the second work on the program, Schubert’s Sonata in A minor. Mr. McCawley, whose playing sounds far more fluid than his hunched shoulders might suggest, emphasized the harmonic shifts and contrasting moods in a lyrical, heartfelt performance.
After intermission Mr. McCawley spoke briefly about Hans Gál — an Austrian Jewish composer (1890-1987) whom he has championed and recorded — who fled Vienna in World War II and settled in Edinburgh. Mr. Gál’s 1922 five-movement Suite for Piano (Op. 24) is an instantly appealing (if not particularly memorable) work, with Debussy-like harmonies, Schubertian lyricism, echoes of Brahms and Prokofiev and a hint of atonality. While alluding to various styles, however, the piece never seems to take a particular stance, although Mr. McCawley deftly contrasted the varied textures and harmonies.
Mr. McCawley concluded his program with Rachmaninoff: first a poetic and mystical account of the Études-Tableaux (Op. 39, Nos. 2 and 8), followed by a probing and virtuosic reading of Variations on a Theme of Corelli. Mr. McCawley explored the variations on the majestic theme, ranging from languid to powerful, with sensitivity and style. The listener, meanwhile, was enveloped in an acoustical cocoon of bright, passionate sound.
