New York Classical Review

What is a sonata? The question seems like it has a simple answer that everyone knows because sonatas are everywhere in classical music. It’s not so simple, though, and even Charles Rosen’s award-winning book The Classical Style wasn’t the last word on the subject. Thats because, as pianist Daniel Colaillo demonstrated in his concert Monday night in Weill Recital Hall, the sonata has been a different thing in the hands of different composers in different eras.

His theme was “Sonatas Through the Ages: A Journey of 300 Years of Sonata Evolution,” and this proved a fascinating trip. 

Colalillo started with Scarlatti’s G minor, “Cat Fugue” sonata, then took the interesting step of skipping Haydn—a one-man era of sonata models—and going to Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 30. This imaginative survey then moved to Liszt’s “quasi sonata,” Après one lecture du Dante, which concluded the first half. After intermission, Colalillo played Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No. 10, the finished the program with the world premiere of Lowell Liebermann’s Piano Sonata No. 4.

This was a thoughtful program then, each piece challenging and stretching the core idea of the sonata as a set of three movements (usually) that opens with a sonata-allegro form movement, and exercise in using a theme and counter-theme to structure the experience of musical transformation.

Scarlatti’s mid-18ᵗʰ century piece, from a time when the word had no clear definition, can seem more of an etude played with a deliberate touch, a slightly weighty, cubed-notes quality to the left hand, with propulsive syncopations in the bass line, and a spry right hand playing Scarlatti’s quasi-fanfare theme. This made a good introduction to the concept and the pianist’s playing.

Unsurprisingly, this went deeper with Beethoven’s haunting late sonata, a thoughtful performance that showed Colalillo had something to say and was articulate about it in every moment. The deliberateness in the Scarlatti here was a specific shaping of each phrase, and especially a taffy-like treatment of tempo. Each movement and section was slower than usually heard. The first and second movements were especially slow, and Colalillo pushed and pulled so much at the music in the first movement that it took on a discontinuous quality.

This was a radical idea. There’s often a structural promiscuous to Beethoven’s late music but because this ideas are spilling forth and running over each other. Colalillo carved them out in segments, seeming to show just how Beethoven defined “sonata.” This was very expressive—neither academic nor dry—and if one didn’t necessarily agree with the approach, it was stimulating and rewarding to hear a musician who had put real thought into the music.

That included a long pause between the second and third movements.. This did interrupt the formal feel, but clearly propelled Colallilo’s thoughts for some singing, lyrical, expressive playing though this wonderful music. An intriguing part of the overall puzzle, the whole performance was at times undercut by some less-than-clear playing, but this wasn’t a musician who was merely playing—he was showing something.

His thinking had greater rewards in the rest of the concert, as his way of highlight certain statements within each piece and laying out the structure worked better with Liszt and Scriabin. Music that in other hands can sound stream-of-consciousness and, for the latter, hermetically mystical, had clear building blocks. This is music that seems to structure emotions more than notes, about what it says not what it does. Colalillo teased out the sonata designs.

Again, this was not a demonstration, Colalillo was playing deep inside the music with a palpable expressive sense growing and pushing through the notes. This was a marvelous performance of Liszt’s quasi-sonata, with a finely balanced technical control of the notes and still a force of meaning. One had the sense in this and the uncanny way he put Scriabin’s logic on display that he was finding pleasure in both the music’s construction and the sheer sound of it, relishing a feeling of discovery and satisfaction at where each phrase led him, and that came through to the listener.

Liebermann’s sonata was, oddly, the most formally conservative of all, with a reversed slow-fast-slow order, and an opening statement that returned in the extended conclusion; a classic sonata study of reintroducing a thematic idea so the listener can measure through it how they’ve charged listening to the music of the preceding minutes. 

With as much thoughtfulness as the rest of the program, one felt rhe music was being played as it was meant to be heard. The most evocative parts were at each end. The opening movement and the extended finale were a series of slow harmonies with the spice of dissonance, a mix of chords with functional relations to each other and a conflicting line that attacked them. This was imaginative and personal, while the toccata-like middle section didn’t show much purpose behind all the notes. The return of the opening statement, chords and harmonies more settled, nailed the conceptual purpose of the sonata.

For an encore, the pianist tackled the final movement of Prokofiev’s wild Sonata No. 7. Again on the slow and thoughtful, Colaillo relished the angular counterpoint and Prokofiev’s uncanny balance between triumph and madness.