If Seymour Lipkin had known Beethoven personally, he could not be any closer to the composer’s work than his long piano career has taken him. This fact alone makes Lipkin the consummate choice to perform Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with Maestro Piotr Gajewski and the National Philharmonic this weekend at the Music Center at Strathmore. “I’ve played all the sonatas, all the concertos, all the chamber music — violin sonatas, cello sonatas, trios … everything!” he said.
| Onstage |
| Seymour Lipkin performs Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major |
| Where: The Music Center at Strathmore; 5301 Tuckerman Lane; North Bethesda |
| When: 8 p.m. Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday |
| Info: $23 to $79; Ages 7 to 17 free; 301-581-5100; strathmore.org |
Lipkin is not bragging; it is merely fact. And somehow, given this delightfully expressed obsession with the work, it is impossible not to believe him when he says, “There isn’t a note [Beethoven] wrote that isn’t interesting.”
Since the age of 20 when he won the prestigious Rachmaninoff award, Lipkin has appeared with all of America’s major orchestras and conductors. He has toured China twice and has performed in Russia and Germany.
Although he has performed and conducted the Piano Concerto No. 4 many times, Lipkin continues to discover more about Beethoven and his works, much as friends learn more about each other as the years pass.
“It’s very interesting,” Lipkin continued. “I recently played a fantasia of Beethoven’s which seemed to be a written out version of the way he would sit and improvise. Beethoven was known to be a fantastic improviser [and] you get the impression that this giant guy really [played] the most astonishing things to amaze the audience.”
Lipkin points out that the concerto’s challenge for the pianist to have a sense of what the personality of the soloist is intended to be and juxtapose it against the orchestra while still being in the same ballpark.
“Intrinsic in the work is this sense that the big guy is sitting there and saying, ‘OK you guys, that was very beautiful, now I’m going to improvise around it, and one of these days I’ll come back and join you, but for the moment, I’m just going to play whatever comes into my head – scales and arpeggios and other different things.’ I thought it very interesting that soloist versus orchestra is so strongly delineated.”
Lipkin laughs at the idea he has brought Beethoven to life, while clearly delighted to have done so.
“Well, that’s the idea,” he boomed. “That’s what we try to do. It’s our job.”
This all-Beethoven evening also features the composer’s “Coriolan Overture” and the iconic Symphony No. 7 in A Major.
