Music / Harmonic Curves: Romantic Piano, Arnan Wiesel. At Wesley Music Centre, April 6.  Reviewed by MICHAEL WILSON.

From two of the most notable composers for solo piano from the Romantic period, Arnan Wiesel treated his audience to two monumental works: Robert Schumann’s Carnaval Op.9 (1835) and Franz Liszt’s Sonata in b minor (1853). 

With his trademark flair and technical mastery, pianist Arnan Wiesel deftly demonstrated the classical traditions that anchored Schumann, contrasted with Liszt’s unrestrained adventurism and testing of musical boundaries.

Although Liszt and Schumann were direct contemporaries (Schumann born in 1810, Liszt in 1811), there are very few similarities in the style of the two works, apart from the sheer drama of each.

Schumann’s Carnaval is a tour through a town fair in 21 short movements, with Schumann and his real and imagined friends (including his wife, his first fiancée, Chopin, Paganini) as the central characters.

Beginning boldly with the preambule, Wiesel showed the friends grandly promenading through the gates, before meeting clowns and jesters. Wiesel conveyed the changing moods – from dramatic to reflective, mischievous (Coquette) to delicate (Papillons: butterflies), theatrical to metered – not only with clear changes in playing style, but also with his face and his body.

While Liszt admired Robert and Clara Schumann, they had a somewhat tempestuous relationship.  Nevertheless, Liszt dedicated his Sonata in b minor to Robert, possibly recognising that Robert was by 1853 near his end when the work premiered (he was already resident in a mental health facility and died in 1856 aged only 46). When Liszt presented the work to Clara, she could not make sense of it.

This sonata is a bit bonkers and must have caused a sensation in its day.

Commencing with the sounding of a single note, it is a long arc of a work, building in different motifs and ideas to make a theatrical work on a very grand scale.

There are only three or four discernible melodic lines in the whole piece, the rest of it being a changing canvas of textures and emotions and demonstrations of what the piano can do beneath the fingers of the most accomplished masters.  And this Wiesel achieved in spades, with sensitivity and expression and the necessary degree of drama.

From a fast-rolling right hand over rapid chord progressions in the left, to a sense of bounding between stepping stones up and down the keyboard, it was mesmerising to watch.

Wiesel seemed at ease with this ambitious program, with very few slips, and even treated the audience to a sensitive rendition of Träumerei (Dreaming) from Schumann’s Scenes from Childhood as an encore.

These big works were almost too much for the recital room at the Wesley Music Centre, the repertoire begging for the resonance and reverberation of a large concert hall and a full-sized grand piano.  Still, the experience was both profound and thought-provoking.