Embassy of Hungary, Washington, D.C.

Born in Budapest, Hungary, internationally acclaimed Hungarian pianist Peter Pertis graduated from the Béla Bartók Conservatory of Music, and was soon admitted to the Piano Department of the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, winning the Bartók National Piano Competition in Budapest in 1960.

After receiving his Doctor of Musical Arts Degree he became an artist of the National Concert Management of Hungary, while Interkoncert Hungary took on his international management. His career was further boosted when the Hungarian recording company Qualiton released his first LP, with him being the first Hungarian pianist to record “Pictures of an Exhibition” by Moussorgsky.

His successes in Hungary were followed by recognition abroad. Thanks to the unanimous acclaim of international concert managers, audiences, and critics, Peter Pertis was allowed to travel to the West, a rare privilege in those days. (For more information on Peter Pertis, please, visit his website at: www.peterpertis.com.)

Strathmore Mansion hosted a piano concert on Sunday, February 24, 2008 during which Peter Pertis played Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt and Schumann pieces. Two well-known Washingtonian art critics reviewed his performance there.

Hungarian pianist Peter Pertis, who must have been born about 1940, has not had an easy career as a concert pianist and piano instructor. After an early career in his native Hungary and in Japan, he defected to the West in 1978. After this, the recordings, programs and reviews of Pertis’earlier career in Hungary were simply destroyed, and his career in his native country thus became a forgotten–even forbidden–fact. By contrast, his Strathmore concert attracted several members of the Hungarian Embassy staff.

After 1978, Pertis spent a number of years teaching at the Hartt School of Music at the University of Hartford. After several recent years in which he has given almost no concert performances, Pertis has chosen to return to the concert world, and the talents he amply demonstrated Sunday in the Strathmore Mansion suggest an important talent can be resurrected and should be more widely shared.

The most dramatic composition played by Pertis was undoubtedly Schumann’s lengthy Carnaval, which made up the entire second half of the program. It was not surprising that after his exultantly dramatic rendition of a major piece from the Romantic repertoire Pertis chose to play but a single encore. Lushly lyrical, Carnaval becomes progressively more and more opulent in its effects.

Pertis plays in what may be a rather “Russian” manner, boldly and at times even aggressively, but his adroit fingering and deft touch mean that he never seems to be just pounding for the sake of volume. Pertis’ performance of Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata was certainly athletic, vigorously demonstrative but also emotionally exploratory. Pertis gave the first movement a propulsive force that seldom abated, and by contrast made the second movement deeply melodic.

The selection of three Chopin walzes (and a Chopin nocture for the single encore) was not surprising. Under Pertis’ fingers, Chopin becomes less neurasthenic than audiences often expect, and an inner toughness in the composer is brought to the surface.

It is always curious when a major pianist chooses to play one of Liszt’s many relatively obscure pieces for the virtuoso pianist, as it is almost impossible for an audience of general listeners to judge adequately the performance of an unfamiliar piece on first hearing. Yet many pianists obviously find Liszt irresistible and simply insert their own personal favorites into a concert program. The Vallee d’Obermann was impressive, but not likely to be a composition many in the Strathmore audience would have known well, if even a few knew it at all.

"The Hungarian pianist Peter Pertis spent a decade in semi-retirement to reconsider his artistic mission and enlarge his repertoire. Yet he emerged from that hiatus on Sunday afternoon to present a recital at Strathmore Mansion consisting entirely of thrice-familiar chestnuts: Beethoven's 'Pathetique" Sonata, three Chopin waltzes, Liszt's "Vallée d'Obermann" and Schumann's "Carnaval".

Pertis produces a rich, velvety sound and devotes considerable attention to the sensitive voicing of chords. In the slow movement of the "Pathetique," for instance, Beethoven's noble lyricism was held aloft by carefully calibrated, nuanced textures in the accompaniment, to beautiful effect. For all his emphasis on tone production, Pertis seemed little concerned with articulation strategies - the varied attack and release of individual notes.

The three Chopin dances including the famous C-sharp Minor and "Minute" waltzes of Op. 64, were rhythmically destabilized by a curiously eccentric rubato. And the richly imaginative, fleeting impressions and character sketches that constitute Schumann's "Carnaval" threatened to jump the tracks due to unbridled accelerations and quixotic halts. Indeed, some of the more technically challenging movements, such as "Reconnaissance" and "Paganini," were little more than blurs of notes swamped with pedal.

One hopes that, as he relaxes into a schedule of regular performances, Pertis will free himself of the mannerisms displayed in this recital to cultivate a more centered and direct interpretive approach.