Scale the Mountain, Drain the Depths: Music, Musician, Writer!

       The headline writer for the review might have been inspired himself:

       "Pianist Perahia scales the mighty 'Hammerklavier'"

       Critic Mark Swed's first words are "Beethoven's massive, daunting, imposing, terrifying, exhilarating, breathtaking 'Hammerklavier Sonata' is not Everest.  It just seems that way as one compiles a list of roaring adjectives. . ."

       Of musician Perahia, Swed says, "[H]e produces an unflappable beauty that seeks the reverberant essence of each note, just as a Japanese priest officiating at a tea ceremony finds in every sip the all-consuming spirit of tea."

       Perahia is so challenged, "He left the stage looking completely drained, this pianist who always puts the music first having not just played a sonata but lived through a momentous human experience, a pianist who had, himself, drained the bottomless 'Hammerklavier.'"

       Mighty heights, bottomless depths:  Beethoven, Perahia, Swed.

(from Los Angeles Times, Calendar Section, April 29, 2016)