KONSTANTIN SHAMRAY Piano Recital / Review

KONSTANTIN SHAMRAY Piano Recital
NUS Centre for the Arts Theatre
Sunday (28 February 2010, 8 pm)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 3 March 2010.

There has been a longstanding tradition since the early 1980s that the first prizewinner of the Sydney International Piano Competition gets to perform a concert in Singapore. The National University of Singapore’s ExxonMobil Campus Concert series hosted its most recent winner from 2008, the Russian Konstantin Shamray, a sterling testament to the competition’s lofty standards.

In a highly ambitious recital programme that harked back to those by the late great Russian masters of Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels, Shamray simply shone. Bach’s Partita No.4 in D major was distinguished by crystal-clear articulation, as if plucked from a harpsichord but burnished with the piano’s rich sonority. Its seven movements came alive with a palpable crispness, with its dances brimming with verve and vitality.

Shamray takes a bow.

Then came the epic vision of Beethoven’s final sonata, No.32 in C minor (Op.111). Shamray opened fearlessly with massive chords and octaves, portraying gravitas and tragedy on a grand scale. Never treating its cascading runs as mere exercise, his was a thinking artist’s response to the composer’s overarching angst and despair.

The second (and final) movement’s chorale and variations was an encyclopaedic study in extremes, laying bare Beethoven’s innovations and peeks into the future, one filled with stark dissonances, unapologetic trills and jazzy syncopations. The sense of timelessness was pervasive, completing a rewarding journey from turmoil to ultimate serenity.

A portrait of concentration.

A short set of Scriabin pieces, a Nocturne (Op.5 No.1), two Préludes (Op.27) and the elegant Waltz in A flat major (Op.38), provided a Chopinesque interlude before the final big work, Prokofiev’s Eighth Sonata in B flat major (Op.84). Arguably the greatest of the Russian’s nine sonatas, its longeurs and unsettling mix of lyricism with violence fell well within Shamray’s spidery fingers.

His control was unerring, as was judgment of the music’s wide-ranging and often awkward dynamics. The first movement rumbled with disquiet, balanced by the second movement’s bittersweet minuet-like postures. The machine-gun relentlessness of the whirlwind finale was a marvel to behold, with velocity and volume ratcheted to almost insupportable ends.

Two encores by Tchaikovsky – Meditation and Polonaise (from the 18 Morceaux Op.72) - was the well-deserved balm, in turn rewarded by a chorus of cheers. This Russian has truly come, and conquered he did.

Concert photos by NUS Centre for the Arts.