29 November 2005, The official 90th Birthday Recital in Carnegie Hall, New York City
A Veteran Pianist Sticks With the Things He Knows Best
By Bernard Holland
Some concerts put music first, with performers as vessels for the thoughts of others. Other concerts use music as an excuse to put interesting personalities onstage. Concerts can measure some extraordinary physical or intellectual accomplishment. A few concerts qualify as historic events.
Earl Wild's recital at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday night was a bit of all of the above. Mr. Wild has just turned 90. He is still playing the piano and drawing audiences. And though his life span may have lacked the dramatic extramusical leaps that marked the career of Van Cliburn, it is hard to think of another American pianist who has been so successful for so long.
So any critical review of Tuesday's events must necessarily come in layers. There is the geriatric miracle layer: can he still play the notes? Then comes Mr. Wild's long history of big pieces played in the grand manner, and his longstanding delight in astonishing audiences with feats of virtuosity and stamina: have the years sobered his tastes or left his big-bang personality unaltered? And how is he doing in general? What is it like to be 90 and still have a job?
Mr. Wild stuck with what he knows well on Tuesday. There were few surprises on the program: familiar Chopin, including two ballades; two transcriptions (a chaste little piece by Alessandro Marcello and an extravagantly ornate version of the "Mexican Hat Dance"); Liszt's great "Jeux d'Eau a la Villa d'Este"; and - the closest thing to an anomaly - Beethoven's busy, bustling D major Sonata from Opus 10.
Although subject to minor derailments, Mr. Wild's technique works remarkably well. He loves the Liszt for the right reasons and gives it an almost sensual glow. He can still play the ballades, which are not easy, and aging seems to have processed the drama of Chopin's B flat minor Scherzo into something almost gentle. The occasional messiness in the first movement of the Beethoven was caused less by the performer's deficiency than ruinously escalating tempos that would have done in a virtuoso a third his age.
I think I hear in Mr. Wild's later years a more sober and thoughtful, and thus a more interesting, musician than the one I remember from his slam-bang, shoot-'em-up prime.
Both the simple Marcello piece and Beethoven's deeply rhetorical Largo movement were touchingly done. Maybe this kind of musicianship was always there but, with all the razzle-dazzle in the way, never got to our ears. Maybe it never got to Mr. Wild's ears either. I suspect that being a little less of a pianist these days has made him a better musician.
A Birthday Recital for the Record Books
By Peter G. Davis
NEW YORK -- It was a quiet celebration. Friends and colleagues and piano mavens filled Carnegie Hall, warm standing ovations were frequent, and at the end octogenarian Ned Rorem came out to accompany the audience in "Happy Birthday." At the center of it all stood Earl Wild, smiling but pensive, his mind entirely on the piano recital he had mapped out to play on Nov. 29, three days after his 90th birthday.
Wild moves cautiously these days, and it's said that he suffers from considerable macular degeneration. But otherwise the man is completely intact: trim, handsome and every hair in place to form that immaculately styled, wavy grey coif that's long been his trademark. Most important of all, those infallible fingers have lost very little over the years. The program he chose was vintage Wild. Framed by two of his own transcriptions (a Marcello Adagio to lead off and a witty dissection of the gMexican Hat Danceh as a finale), the meat of the evening offered a Beethoven sonata (Op. 10, No. 3), Liszt's gLes jeux d'eaux a la Villa D'Esteh and a Chopin collection (the Ballades Nos. 1 and 3, Scherzo No. 2, and the gFantaisie-impromptuh).
People now call Earl Wild the last of the romantics. I've heard that said of dozens of pianists, but in this case the prophets could be right; we may very well have reached the end if we are talking "romantic" in the sense that most piano scholars use the word. To the late Harold Schonberg, an authority on the subject, it was the freedom to express an artist's individual personal perception while still comprehending and being completely immersed in the composer's style. Out of this, beauty of tone, a singing line, virtuoso bravura and all the rest arise naturally to make a pianist's performance excitingly his own.
That pretty much accurately describes Wild's approach, and he has not lost an ounce of understanding, even if his fingers are occasionally recalcitrant. And even that was evident only to the analytical who listened hard to a few disheveled moments in the Presto first movement of the Beethoven or to a few tangled passages in Liszt's intricately woven spray of notes. Mostly what one heard was the music played with limpid clarity, elegantly proportioned readings but always forcefully characterized without a trace of barnstorming.
The Chopin gFantaisie-impromptuh might well have been the evening's highlight. Rarely does one hear the gossamer interplay of rippling passagework of this keyboard evergreen so clearly defined or so effectively delineated, a perfect setup for the quiet lyrical beauty of the famous tune that forms the center of the piece. Other pianists tend to make a bigger, more virtuosic statement with the gFantaisie,h and if Wild applied more poetic restraint, I think that had less to do with age than with wisdom. In the end he discovered Chopin's romantic essence within the sheer structural strength of the notes, as few pianists ever do. If I am guessing right, his one encore was an obscure Nocturne by Respighi, a piece of salon kitsch, perhaps, but utterly beguiling when played with this level of dynamic control and velvet tonal beauty.
Despite its special nature, this birthday recital was just another day in the life of Earl Wild, who continues to concertize and make recordings for Ivory Classics while finishing up an autobiography for publication next year. That should be a page-turner from a colorful musician whose career for almost a century has touched nearly every important musical figure and institution in the country. I expect it will be the perfect book to pass the time while we wait for the centennial recital.
Pianist Earl Wild marks 90th birthday
By MARTIN STEINBERG
NEW YORK - His gait was slow and his face pale, but pianist Earl Wild's fingers flew and his playing was filled with color at a Carnegie Hall recital celebrating his 90th birthday.
Cascading runs, deep blues, fiery reds, scorching yellows and richly textured shades - all articulated by an old master with thick white hair during Tuesday night's 90-minute performance.
Despite the emotion of the occasion - three days after a momentous birthday and months after a quadruple bypass and two eye operations - Wild channeled heartfelt passions through his long, delicate hands. Yet it was a thoroughly cerebral performance that revealed a mind as sharp as any other.
Playing eight works by memory - Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin, Marcello and one of his own - he never lost his way, even after a rare stumble.
With the 2,800-seat concert hall nearly filled, Wild got a robust greeting. Wearing a gray suit, white shirt and reddish necktie, the 6-foot-1 musician carefully made his way to the Shigeru Kawai grand piano and steadied himself as he sat down.
His opening number was his transcription of the introspective Adagio of the Oboe Concerto in D minor by the Baroque composer Alessandro Marcello. Wild played it pensively - slowly and with emotional depth but without a hint of histrionics.
"There are a lot of pretentious people playing, so I try to avoid that feeling," Wild told The Associated Press in an interview last summer.
In the next piece, Beethoven's Sonata No. 7 in D, Wild captured the rambunctious composition with an athleticism that belied his age. His hands nimbly ran up and down the keyboard; his syncopation crisp. During the somber second movement, he revealed the angst of the dark arpeggios that briefly blossom into an optimistic moment before descending back to tragedy.
The rest of the program featured more celebratory works from 19th-century Romantic composers to whom Wild has a close connection. In Liszt's "Les jeux d'eaux a la Villa d'Este," a musical portrait of the Tivoli fountains, Wild's notes sprayed out of the piano. He maintained a controlled passion through the gorgeous melodies of Chopin's Ballades Nos. 1 and 3. He galloped and jumped through Chopin's Scherzo No. 2, remaining unflappable despite a few glitches, and was dreamlike in Chopin's Fantasie-Impromptu No. 4, whose main melody was used for the song "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows." At the end of the piece, the audience roared.
Wild displayed his considerable humor in his final work - his trademark variations on "Mexican Hat Dance." At the first cadence, he held up his hand like a traffic cop and paused for several long moments. When he was finished, he displayed a boyish smile as audience members cheered and jumped to their feet. Two women handed him bouquets. On another curtain call, soprano Aprille Milo [sic] handed him more flowers before she and composer Ned Rorem led the audience in a serenade of "Happy Birthday."
Wild then played one encore - Respighi's "Nocturne."
During the interview last summer, Wild was asked why he selected such a program for the celebration.
"I always play music that I like. If you don't play music that you like, it sounds like it. It's easy to learn something and then play it. But if you don't really love it, what have you got?"
