KENNETH HAMILTON Piano Recital
Esplanade Recital Studio
Wednesday (5 April 2023)
LILYA ZILBERSTEIN Piano Recital
Victoria Concert Hall
Thursday (6 April 2023)
This review was published in The Straits Times on 10 April 2023 with the title "Rare piano works a treat in two recitals".
For every recital of Chopin’s piano music, there should be a recital that presents something different. It was thus refreshing to encounter visiting international artists going out on a limb to perform rarities, two such persons being Scottish pianist Kenneth Hamilton and Russia-born German pianist Lilya Zilberstein. On two consecutive evenings, their audiences were treated to works likely to have been Singapore premieres.
On Wednesday evening, Hamilton showed exactly why Italian composer-pianist Ferruccio Busoni’s transcription of Franz Liszt’s organ work Fantasy on Ad nos, Ad salutarem undam (Come To Us, To Waves Of Salvation) has never previously been performed here. It is a dense, thickly contrapuntal behemoth lasting the best part of a half-hour, overflowing with multitudes of chords and octaves, requiring relentless stamina and endurance to pull off.
Based on a chorale melody from Giacomo Meyerbeer’s opera The Prophet, the metamorphosis from its bare bones, through tumultuous struggles to reach benedictional heights and fugal consummation was a momentous journey in itself. Hamilton’s mastery of its digital and physical demands, while fleshing out spiritual inspirations, was a marvel to behold.
Balancing the heavyweight programme was Brahms’ considerably more accessible Handel Variations, filled with thorny thickets of its own. While its mighty concluding fugue brought out the plaudits, Hamilton also revealed a more intimate side to his pianism. Both works were preceded by a Chopin Nocturne, selected with the appropriate mood and tonality to set the stage. As a further point in symmetry, transcriptions of J.S.Bach by Busoni and Alexander Siloti opened and closed his recital with an air of sublimity.
 |
| Photo: Ung Ruey Loon |
Zilberstein’s recital on Thursday evening opened with familiar music. Schubert’s Six Musical Moments may be considered student fodder, but she brought out a wealth of sonority from what seemed like simple lines. This continued into a selection of four Schubert lieder transcriptions by Liszt, dressed with complex harmonisations and virtuosic devices. Through all these, one did not just hear prodigiously spun out notes but an unbroken thread of singing voices.
Her second half was far more esoteric, with the listener being led to ask, “Why have we not heard this before?” French composer Ernest Chausson is famous for his Poeme for violin and orchestra, but his Quelques Danses (Some Dances) deserves to be better known. Its mundane title belied a progression of delicious, often surprising and ear-catching harmonies, which Zilberstein delivered with a missionary zeal and sweeping aplomb.
 |
| Photo: Ung Ruey Loon |
Carl Czerny’s fussily-titled Introduction, Variations Brillantes et Rondo de Chasse (Op.202) may be classified under the pigeon-hole of early Romantic virtuoso pot-boilers. Czerny, Beethoven’s most famous student and Liszt’s most important teacher, is underrated because he was just too prolific. Zilberstein’s ability to transcend its florid and overdone ornamentations, however, persuaded one to regard these entertaining diversions as virtues, and even long for more.
Her choice of encores was just as intriguing. There was more Chausson, his Paysage (Landscape) wallowed in luscious pre-Debussyan harmonies, while Soviet era Russian composer Georgy Svirodov's rhythmically quirky Musical Moment was the perfect sweetmeat to go home with.
Rarities rule, because both Hamilton and Zilberstein demonstrably said so.
 |
| Photo: Ung Ruey Loon |
