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An auspicious
recital was given by Soheil Nasseri on October 13th at Weill Hall.
The 22-year-old pianist was born in Santa Monica, California, began his
music lessons at five, and gave his first public recital at the age of
seven. He has studied with an impressive list of mentors - including
Ann Schein at the Peabody Conservatory, Jerome Lowenthal, Alfred Brendel,
Richard Goode, and the late Karl Ulrich Schnabel.
It took but
a few, securely-played bars of Beethoven's magnificent early Sonata No.
4 in E-flat, Op. 7 to make it plainly evident that Mr. Nasseri was the
possessor of a first-class musical mind, technically adroit, and wonderfully
well-prepared for his demanding program. His basic style, one might
say, reflects the best aspects of what we call "the modern style":
cleanly etched; structurally and architecturally lucid; and bracingly
unsentimental.
This writer heard something akin to the young Brendel at his pristine best, the hurtling first movement of the sonata ideally well-spaced rhythmically, texturally transparent and sagacious of every potential, and wonderful, harmonic event. The glorious slow movement, Largo, con gran espressione, usually begins with a halting theme, chordal and noble in character, is later interspersed with pregnant pauses (which become more troubled as the melody progresses and at the summation punctuated by a series of detached fortissimo chords), and a third subordinate motif is stated in bare octaves answered by bird-like pianissimo accaciaturas in the treble (precursors to Bartok's "nature sounds", perhaps?).