Music Reviews : Naumburg Winner Plays at Ambassador Auditorium

Anton Nel arrived at Ambassador Auditorium, Pasadena, on Monday night by virtue of having won first prize in the 1987 prestigious Walter Naumburg International Piano Competition. The recital was the second event of Ambassador’s Gold Medal Piano Series.

Nel neither looks nor plays like a conventional competition winner. In appearance, the South African is trim, blond and husky; it is not hard to imagine him with a football under his arm. Yet his principal aim is not to play faster and louder than his competitors.

It took the entire first half for Nel to warm up to his best estate, hampered by a distempered Steinway that had to receive attention during intermission. When he finally overcame all the hazards, he marked himself as a pianist of exceptional sensitivity and stylistic discrimination. His fluency was as unerring as his taste, and he eventually made music of a kind that enforces audience attention.

The opening Haydn Sonata in E flat, Hob. XVI: 52, failed to get off the ground partly because it is of no great inherent interest and partly because of the liabilities of his instrument. A Chopin group proved a bit too fussy and quite a bit too dull. Saint-Saens’ long neglected “Etude en forme de Valse,” however, loosened up the pianist’s generous facility.

The pianist who played after intermission seemed from quite another school. Three Scarlatti Sonatas were more than just crisp and clean; they were arrogantly phrased and toned, releasing the pictorial element so lightly buried under the Scarlatti surface.

Schubert’s “Wanderer” Fantasy in C became a major accomplishment. Nel illuminated it with a fine sense of pace, delivering a true Viennese lilt in the Scherzo and a solid fugue that avoided pushing and shoving.

An impressed audience coaxed two encores from the pianist: a limpid Schubert A-flat Impromptu, and another Scarlatti Sonata.