OLLI MUSTONEN. PROKOFIEV PIANO CONCERTO NO.2 / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

OLLI MUSTONEN. 

PROKOFIEV PIANO CONCERTO NO.2

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Friday (26 October 2018)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 29 October 2018 with the title "Controversial pianist provides gripping experience".

The title of Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s latest concert only tells part of the story, and should not have been its main selling point. Finnish pianist Olli Mustonen is a divisive figure among pianophiles. He is either regarded a self-indulgent hack or wayward genius. As expected, his performance of Prokofiev’s early but monumental Second Piano Concerto had many points of contention.

There was no doubt Mustonen possessed the facility to overcome multitudes of notes and recreate the brutalist shock and awe that scandalised the work’s first audiences. However his tendency to pick at notes in a detached and percussive manner, and erratically placing accents when least expected, were jarring. With any hint of subtlety or luxury of legato totally purged, the effect was like hearing glass shattering and then walking barefooted on the shards.

Painfully piquing the ears he did in the opening movement’s massive cadenza, the Scherzo’s machine-gun assault in moto perpetuo, and the 3^rd movement’s grotesque ballet. There were neither moments of respite for pianist, orchestra nor audience, thus making for a unnervingly gripping experience. After the tempestuous finale’s firestorm closed with a gigantic crash, there were applause and cheers to match. A quaintly accented encore showed Mustonen could also play quietly.

Amid the cacophony was the tireless industry of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, expertly marshalled by Finnish guest conductor Hannu Lintu who held the whole enterprise together. There was also a pleasing symmetry to the rest of concert, which opened with Tchaikovsky’s symphonic poem Francesca da Rimini and closed with Sibelius’ First Symphony, both quasi-programmatic in nature and cast in the key of E minor. 

The harrowing journey to Dante’s Inferno was vividly captured by brass fanfares and heaving strings in the Tchaikovsky. The plight of titular character Francesca’s forbidden love with brother-in-law Paolo was excellently characterised by Li Xin’s clarinet solo, his long-breathed opening statement a premonition of the Sibelius to come. The performance was a breathtaking one, with a dramatic close that epitomised both tragedy and heroism in equal measure.

There is no secret that Sibelius’ First Symphony was influenced by Tchaikovsky. The first bars were dominated by solo clarinet, now helmed by principal Ma Yue, and this theme would return again in the finale. In between was music of sweeping passion, with a debt owed to the Russians but the Finn Sibelius finding his own voice.  

How the orchestra could colour such music with the icy chill of the Arctic, and later bask in the warmth of Mediterranean sunshine within a few pages was down to conductor Lintu’s magisterial control of the entire ensemble. Similarly, the 3^rd movement’s boisterous dance was a refreshing contrast with the finale’s big and broad melody, one Rachmaninov would have been proud of. The final glorious apotheosis and quiet close, touches of genius and realised with utmost sympathy, made the evening all the more memorable.

Here is the performance of Prokofiev's Second Piano Concerto to savour and enjoy again:

OLLI MUSTONEN Piano Recital / 22nd Singapore International Piano Festival / Review

OLLI MUSTONEN Piano Recital

22^nd Singapore 
International Piano Festival

Victoria Concert Hall

Friday (26 June 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 29 June 2015 with the title "Bizarre but rewarding fare".

It would appear that concert-goers are still scared by the name of Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953), which might explain how a near full-house that greeted Imogen Cooper's recital of Chopin, Schumann and Schubert on Thursday had almost halved by the time of Finnish pianist Olli Mustonen's recital on Friday evening. What he offered was unprecedented in Singapore: an all-Prokofiev programme comprising five of the 20^th century Russian composer's nine piano sonatas.

To the less initiated, Prokofiev equates with loudness, percussiveness, abrasiveness and dissonance. Mustonen was to partly dispel that notion, but did not always help his cause by the affectation and mannerisms in his playing. He used very little sustaining pedal, prefering a dry and tinny sound as if to accentuate the music's acerbic qualities, and then placing accents, often hammered out like a dentist's drill, in spots where one would least expect them.

Add these to his playing with the aid of scores, the finicky tendency of his right hand to quiver and quake just before descending on the keyboard, and his sitting on a stool that had been raised to its highest limit and further placed on a wooden board (like a Glenn Gould in reverse). All these were recipe for a potential artistic disaster. Despite the I-do-as-I-please stance which occupy piano narcissists like Ivo Pogorelich, Lang Lang and Tzimon Barto, he kept the audience spellbound and enthused, which was no mean task.

The first half opened with Fifth Sonata in its earlier version (with a quieter ending), which was mostly congenial in a neoclassical way, but with a brittle central movement played with so much staccato as if he was daintily skipping through a floor of broken glass. The monumental Eighth Sonata that followed, arguably the greatest work of the set, came close to a travesty.

Those who grew up with Sviatoslav Richter or Emil Gilels' classic recordings would have found Mustonen's version a caricature of the masterpiece, sickly and grotesque. The first movement's bittersweet lyricism was run roughshod but its development was undeniably thrilling. The second movement's gavotte was soggy rather than crisp and the athletic finale becoming a breathlessly incoherent race to the finish line. At least he was not boring.

The second half began with two single-movement sonatas that played for under eight minutes each. The First Sonata, a student work, was lathered with so much romanticism and rubato that it began to sound like Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninov. The penchant for exaggeration was even worse in the popular Third Sonata which despite its compactness was strangely shapeless. Young pianists who play like this will be ejected in the first round of any competition, anywhere.

As if reserving his best for the last, the Seventh Sonata – Prokofiev's most popular - was a total triumph. The work is already so over-the-top, and indestructible like a Soviet T-34 tank, that any overstatement would scarcely be possible. Here all the excesses Mustonen could muster just aided its inexorable narrative.

Its impression of a war juggernaut was totally apt, and the tolling bells of the slow movement a memorial to total war and utter desolation.  The notorious precipitous finale was taken a breakneck speed and he did not let up for a single moment until its romping bitter end. 

The tumultuous applause was totally deserved, and two Prokofiev miniatures as encores – the harp-like Prelude (Op.12 No.7) and the March from The Love For Three Oranges -  completed a bizarre but surprisingly rewarding evening's fare.