Melodious times: Pianist Usman Anees pleases audience with his music selection

Last time I heard him at Goethe Institut, when he performed with Stephen Rahn.

KARACHI:

In the tasteful and exceptionally elegant recital organised by Shirin Niazi at a private residence on the evening of December 2, this was the very first time in 40 years of writing reviews of Western classical music that I came across a programme that was literally dripping with jewels.

Each of the entries that the virtuoso Usman Anees had included in his selection was melodious, lyrical and immensely pleasing, the sort of musical fare that we are told we will hear in that sacred place above the clouds after having pegged down from natural causes.



The last time I heard Usman on the piano was at the Goethe Institut, when he performed in tandem with Stephen Rahn during the Wagner Festival. I was so impressed by the way he handled himself in Liszt’s transcription of Wagner’s Liebestod, immortalised by the legendary Horowitz, I requested that eternal classic during the encores — talking about encores, he also played one of his own compositions entitled Sounds of the East. A most unusual piece that would certainly have appealed to Rudyard Kipling had he still been around.

By all accounts the Hungarian Franz Liszt was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, pianist that ever lived. He was in a class of his own. He remains a romantic enigma of music. His symphonic poems developed a new art form and are imaginative and compelling. His religious works are moving and visionary. He was a virtuoso with flair, a genius with the touch of a charlatan.

His influence on Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss was a well-known fact, as was his generosity to other musicians and the young. His championship of Wagner in the Weimar years, with its subsequent effect on Brahms and Schumann caused the great schism in 19th century music.

There could not have been a better selection of other composers — Chopin, Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Beethoven and Mozart — and that too in an hour-long programme. Usman not only had the pick of the composers, he also had the pick of their compositions, the melodies that were instantly recognisable and which identified style and mood — the classics that some of us grew up with and on which we were weaned. The nocturnes, concertos, tone poems, marches, scherzos, fantasias, sonatas, waltzes and rhapsodies flowed from his fingers with consummate ease.

Usman has a steely resolve and understands the nooks and crannies into which the composer plunges the recitalist. He absorbed the mood and temper of each individual piece as if he had been playing the piano since the first Battle of the Somme .There was none of the eccentricity of the recitalist, the swing of mood, where the performer insured that every chord came with an exclamation mark! His enthusiasm is quite fetching, and his humility is most touching. He is young and dynamic and a worthy successor to Jahanara Talati who, regrettably, doesn’t give recitals any more.

I have noticed in the past he has been gravitating towards the works of essentially West European composers. It would be nice if he travelled further south and tackled some of the Spanish composers, such as Isaac Albeniz, Francisco Tarrega, Enrique Granados, ,Joaquim Turina  and Manuel de Falla. And after that, there is always Brazil.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 4^th, 2013.