Performance: Tamas Vesmas

By HEATH LEES

SCHOOL OF MUSIC, Auckland - A solo recital by Tamas Vesmas, Auckland's resident concert pianist, is always welcome.

This programme was in the grand Austro-German tradition, with a major work by Schubert in the first half, and one by Schumann in the second. Neatly framing the entry to each half were two preludes and fugues by Bach. Vesmas made few concessions to current Early Music reticence, adopting instead a muscular approach, with large gestures and quasi-romantic rubato.

The Bach pieces were less successful than the multi-movement works, but Schubert's Op 143 A minor sonata provided the high point of the programme, particularly in its first movement, during which Vesmas kept the music in an iron grip, painting a picture of unrelieved foreboding, like a desolate "Winter's Journey" for piano.

Not even the Andante was allowed much consolation, and the dry whirlwind of the finale was again tightly controlled, until the second theme, when Vesmas let a somewhat mannered left-hand anticipate the beat to give a curiously contrasting effect of dance-like syncopation.

Schumann's Carnival Jest from Vienna is not often chosen by pianists, perhaps because it is difficult to pin down exactly what kind of work it is. Schumann called the movements "fantasy pieces," but the plan seems to be of a five-movement sonata, with a fast-slow-fast frame enriched by a quizzical scherzo movement, and a cascading intermezzo.

Despite some untidy edges, Vesmas brought out the music's warmth and humour (the surprising joke of La Marseillaise in an Austrian setting was nicely drawn) yet the brilliance of the piano writing was always to the fore.

A Schubert impromptu finished off the evening with primary colours again winning out against pastel shades, and a beguiling rhythmic lilt through it all - an enjoyable reminder that the doom-laden composer of the opening A minor sonata had a warm, sociable side too.