For me, the Autumnal Equinox is not just a time of hot chocolates and crunchy leaves but also a call back into nature. The start of autumn can be a soothing period and the perfect time to reconnect with the natural world in our everyday lives. The transition to darker, cloudier days also manifests in my playlists: the Romantics, Impressionists, luscious harmonies, and poignant piano — music that reflects the bittersweet sensations that come with swapping summer sun for chilly mornings and the colors of autumn. Pianist extraordinaire Khatia Buniatishvili’s woodland concert encompasses these two aspects of autumn for me, and I can’t get enough.
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It is such a beautiful idea to take classical music performance outdoors, especially into such a calm and peaceful setting like a woodland. Dappled sunlight filters through the trees and lands delicately on Buniatishvili and the Steinway, small insects fly above and around her, small ripples of a breeze pass through the leaves as the music lifts into the forest… It is utterly peaceful and there is something so natural and fitting about hearing this music in a green setting. A lot of Romantic piano works (e.g. Debussy’s Suite Bergamesque, many of Chopin’s études and préludes, Ravel’s Miroirs) conjure images of streams, forests, meadows, and valleys in my mind’s eye, and I’m sure the composers were themselves inspired by the epic natural world. I think that is what makes this concert so poignant — Khatia seems to release the music back into the wild.
I often listen to concerts without watching, or have one on in the background while I am working, occasionally dropping in to watch some of the action. The setting of this concert, though, makes it a complete experience to which it would be a shame to only listen. Although I could easily sit and watch Buniatishvili perform a whole concert in a usual concert hall setting — I find her particularly captivating to watch and I am often moved by the way she embodies emotion in her whole being as she plays — her playing takes on a transcendent and profound quality in these surroundings that seems to invite you to stop, breathe, look around, and take it all in. I invite you to watch her play Debussy’s Clair de Lune, a piece that most of us have heard dozens of times, and notice how the music takes a new shape as it rises from the piano and seems to linger softly in the trees around her and accentuate the beauty of the simple forest space.
Debussy’s exquisite Clair de Lune accompanied by birdsong
Another highlight for me when watching this concert for the first time was discovering Scriabin’s Etude in C-sharp Minor, Op. 2, No. 1. This two-minute piece speaks to a deeper part of the soul. The music builds to a high point where the left hand adds jagged shapes, forcing them in like unwanted but addictive melancholy, under a rounded melody line in the right hand, building texture and speed until a cascading, waterfall-like moment brings the music flowing back down to a calmer ending. For Buniatishvili, the piece speaks to “pain that you cannot just relax and express… you are in the action, during the tragedy.” Her visible emotional connection to the piece makes her rendition truly moving. It is a beautiful, fleeting moment of music that captures that moody, poetic feel of darker autumn days.
Khatia plays Scriabin’s poetic, melancholy Etude in C-sharp Minor, Op. 2, No. 1
A special mention goes to the sparkling renditions of Brahms’s Hungarian Dance No. 1 and Dvořák’s Slavonic Dance No. 2 that Khatia plays with her sister, Gvantsa. Together, the sisters create beautiful, magnetic moments in which their movements, smiles, and breaths are completely synchronized. I love these pockets of classical music performance that bring women together and allow them to form deeper connections.
Khatia and her sister Gvantsa play No. 2 “Dumka” from Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances, Op. 72.
There is something innately human and quietly powerful about this concert. Perhaps it’s the lush canopy of majestic woodland, the exquisite program, Khatia’s way of connecting to her family through her music, or a combination of all three. Take a moment to stop, breathe, and embrace the beauty of nature and perhaps saying goodbye to summer won’t seem so hard…
