Pianist emerges stronger than before

Michael Houstoun enjoys being back on the recital stage.

Caption1: STRONGER: Michael Houstoun enjoys being back on the recital stage. 

 

Michael Houstoun was in New Plymouth earlier this month, providing two of the Taranaki Festival's classiest events; a superb evening of song with tenor Keith Lewis and a solo recital, featuring the same programme Auckland will hear on Sunday afternoon.

Four years ago, when the pianist was caught in the grip of focal dystonia, concerts such as these may have seemed a dream.

"What was being tested was my philosophy of life," Houstoun remembers. "I could collapse, or I could hunt out the purpose of this seeming disaster.

"However, there is no doubt that what got me back to playing was the brilliant team of 'medi-guys' - Dale Speedy, Simon Loudon, Glenn Williams, Jonathan Kuttner - and the angelic Rae de Lisle, who guided me to a remodelling of my technique.

"Because of them I have emerged in many ways stronger than I was before."

Houstoun tested the water last year when he premiered the Kenneth Young Piano Concerto with the Auckland Philharmonia, and now he is enjoying the recital stage.

It's "the simplicity, the self-reliance and the repertoire" that appeals, and "a creative freedom which is seldom available in concerto or chamber music playing".

This man who, in the 1990s, took all 32 Beethoven Sonatas around the country and who, in the few years before his illness, was fiercely engaged with local composers, has come up with some unexpected inclusions for Sunday's programme.

One is Bach's overlooked French Overture, exquisitely recorded by Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt for Hyperion Records in 2001.

"I have often wondered why it is not played more often," Houstoun muses. "It is regarded as Bach's most substantial solo keyboard work after the Goldberg Variations and it contains one of his very greatest Sarabandes.

"It is essentially a suite of dances and it might be better known if it was published as an appendix to the English Suites, French Suites or Partitas."

Although he is a little testy when I bring up the old piano-versus-harpsichord debate - I am told he would never involve himself in this as it "misses the point" - Houstoun does point out how the French Overture has "specific forte and piano indications, a great rarity in Bach's keyboard works".

"The last movement, Echo, uses them in a most pronounced way and this suggests that Bach may have had an instrument more advanced than the harpsichord in mind when he wrote it," Houstoun says.

After Bach we will be given four of Schubert's six Moments Musicaux which appeal because of "the purity in this music".

"I'm not inclined to summon images or create stories to help me 'interpret' the pieces," he adds. "Rather I try to let their purity work on me and pull up my own most pure musicality."

The second half of the programme is French - the complete first book of Debussy Preludes - and Houstoun's enthusiasm is infectious.

"Debussy's music is subtle, sophisticated, infinitely suggestive and sensationally pianistic. It digs deep into the human psyche as well as playing in fringe areas that are often ignored.

"He is rather too easily seen as an impressionist or colourist, but I think his greatest mastery is in the illumination of delicate and brilliant areas of human feeling."

We agree that ours is an age in which too many young people often don't have wide enough cultural references to appreciate the historical relevance of the music they are playing, although Houstoun picks out one young talent for special commendation.

"It has been a great joy to witness the emergence of John Chen as a wonderful pianist and musician. Many times his playing has left me with nothing to say but 'Bravo!' He is a natural artist and engages his full being when he plays."

"As for advising a whole generation of young pianists, if I were pushed I'd be inclined to misquote Lance Armstrong, who titled his autobiography It's Not About The Bike and say, 'It's not about the piano'." 

*  Michael Houstoun at the Auckland Town Hall Concert Chamber, Sunday 3pm