The rumble of the train in Marfa is an essential quality of her soundscape; the Milky Way, essential to the skyscape; and the wind, needful for clearing the air. Anything that happens in Marfa cannot be divorced from her landscape. An experience is located at particular coordinates in space and, of course, time. Such was the case this weekend when the planetary bodies aligned by way of Ballroom Marfa with the too-brief visitation by London pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy.
Opening the way for the invisible New Moon solar eclipse on Sunday, Kolesnikov and Tsoy held up a vast dark mirror into which all who heard the clanging of the keys could scry.
In a town full of artists on a once volcanic land, the visionaries abiding in Marfa are many. Sensitivity to frequencies is what brings many of us here––the need to strip away intrusive clambering and orchestrate our lives according to our own internal rhythms.
Even in such a quiet town, I often still find it quite difficult to go out in public, as if I can feel every word spoken and feel every evil glance shot. This was not the case during the performances by Kolesnikov and Tsoy over the weekend. The frequency of the pianos played seemed to flatten out the energy of the space so that what was left was tuned visions and offerings.
On Friday evening’s performance at the Bullroom (a former bull barn turned event space by Ballroom Marfa), Tsoy started with Piano Sonata No. 6 by Galina Ustvolskaya as if the earth wasn’t already shattering. The opening sonata was like crashing through a plate glass window in order to solve a puzzle. His forearm banged the bass in perfect time as if to foretell what was already happening: The world is burning. He played like we all agreed on the state of the world. He made dissonance resonate.
Yet that was just the opener. As Tsoy transitioned to Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111, he made the old seem new. Listening to this piece, I could tell that the best music is not only heard but felt. Such an accomplishment of composition could only have been written by the deaf Beethoven after all. How else would he understand what he was writing but through the inner senses? It’s a rare gift to hear this profound feeling by way of such a masterful pianist as Tsoy.
After I had a brief intermission discussion with Charles Mary Kubricht on the nature of reality and UFOs, Kolesnikov gifted us with the Goldberg Variations by Johann Sebastian Bach. He so delicately laced his fingers along the keys as if the piano itself were its own breathing being.
Every elegant note from the works by Bach was a magnified whisper in a quiet room. Kolesnikov made the small seem large. He wasn’t playing a lullaby; he was gracefully ushering us into a trance. Mystical visions were evoked for the sighted as Kolesnikov opened the gates which Bach constructed for us. The four directions lit up around him while figures and shapes danced about as if no one was watching. Someone said they saw angels.
Saturday at noon was hot and stuffy high in the rafters of the Bullroom. The audience was spattered with fans resembling Old Glory, wafting a gentle breeze like the Holy Spirit roaming through the congregation. On the makeshift stage, the two pianos hugged like the polarities of a Tai Chi.
The pianos struck, and a cricket awoke from his daytime slumber, singing his night song as if praying along with the four hands playing. The piece itself, Visions de L’Amen by Oliver Messiaen, evoked a rich tapestry of complications that often accompany the weaving of a prayer. After all, don’t we so often pray in moments of desperation? Just when you think everything is going to be fine, the desperate tension resigns itself to fate. Yet the pianos kept playing as if the story was not finished after all. Maybe there was still hope or something beyond hope, like the story is resolved by its unfolding.
The bass clanged like a gut punch to reveal just how little we can understand about the divine. A toddler began crying, another child looked at her mother with a side glance, looking for reassurance that everything would be okay and skepticism that her mother could truly bring such existential comfort. Like so many prayers, it was like climbing out of a death spiral, yet the purity that lingered in the air after the supplication played made me forget all about the devil, except to make note of his absence.
God’s Time is the Best Time, we were reminded in the encore, and I shed a single tear while others shed many.
The final performance was at the open-air Stone Circle on Saturday night as the new moon approached the solar eclipse in Virgo the Virgin, an earth sign evoking images of the harvest, the changing of seasons, perfectionism and its traps. The land spirits danced their primal dances and reminded us of their twisted humor as the prophecy of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring channeled through the four hands of Kolesnikov and Tsoy. I could describe the swirling of mists, amorphous figures with many eyes watching, the scarab who landed on my knee, the grasshopper who grazed the crown of my head and the stars looking down and singing along. The lights went out—the land making her protest known.
There was no real resolution to any of the stories evoked or contemplations presented by the pieces played by Kolesnikov and Tsoy. As Stravinsky reminds us in so many ways, we’ve been here before; and as Bach reminds us, the mysteries keep the universe in motion. Not every magician waves wands or proclaims oneself as such, and such is the case with Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy.