After Kreutzer | Adelaide Festival 2022 review

This is pianist Anna Goldsworthy’s one-woman show with superb violinist Andrew Haveron consistently deferring to her.

Adelaide Festival 2022. Anna Goldsworthy at the piano with violinist Andrew Haveron in After Kreutzer at Ayers House. Picture: Supplied

After Kreutzer

Classical Music – Australia

ADELAIDE FESTIVAL

Ayers House

Until March 11

This event asks more questions than it answers. Is it a program of Beethoven with a touch of Tolstoy, or Tolstoy with some Beethoven?

One thing is plainly obvious. This is pianist Anna Goldsworthy’s one-woman show with superb violinist Andrew Haveron consistently deferring to her, showing wonderful musicianship and keenly felt empathy.

As Pozdnshev’s wife, one of the main characters of Tolstoy’s novella The Kreutzer Sonata, Goldsworthy muses before each of the three movements of Beethoven’s titanic Violin and Piano Sonata Op 9, assuming the unique dual role of actress and pianist.

After Kruetzer - Anna Goldsworthy. Picture: Andrew Beveridge

Whether her acting inspires her playing would be a moot point but her performance of the work was quite the strongest, most declamatory piece of pianism I have ever heard from her, frequently overpowering Haveron’s violin and literally propelling Beethoven’s colourful score forwards with immense energy.

In the circumstances any imbalances between piano and violin worked perfectly since Goldsworthy’s thoughts and insights spoken directly before each movement naturally imbued the score to follow.

Thus, the epic first movement mirrored the moments of the wife’s murder, the Andante her ensuing emotions witnessing the results of the act and the breathless Presto became an outburst of her final release.

Most listeners hearing Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata are aware of Tolstoy’s novella published 86 years later but the immediacy of Goldsworthy commentary and performance brings a new patina to the music. That said, we should not forget that the music can be fully experienced without a shred of Tolstoy, but you cannot appreciate the Tolstoy completely without having experienced the music.