BORIS GILTBURG Piano Recital / 23rd Singapore International Piano Festival / Review

BORIS GILTBURG Piano Recital

23^rd Singapore International Piano Festival

Victoria Concert Hall

Saturday (25 June 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 27 June 2016 with the title "Russian music in all its elegance and violence".

For the third evening of the Singapore International Piano Festival, Russia-born pianist Boris Giltburg offered an all-Russian programme. Needless to say, this former 1^st Prizewinner of the Queen Elisabeth Piano Competition (2013) had the requisite chops and technique for this repertoire.

What he chose to do with his uncommon abilities was what made his brand of virtuosity vital and relevant. In Rachmaninov's earlier set of Études-Tableaux (Op.33), he seemed to live out the festival's overall theme of “Kaleidoscope” in its eight varied pieces. A punchy march, full of bluster and swagger rowdily opened the proceedings.

Rachmaninov's obsession with bell sounds came to the fore in no less than four numbers, each imbued with different qualities. There were resounding echoes (in No.2), gentle tinkles (No.4), festive pealing (No.6) and finally the carillons of victory (No.8). The defining piece was No.3, where gloomy chords in C minor eventually made way for a transcendent theme in C major, later quoted in the slow movement of his Fourth Piano Concerto.

Boris Giltburg speaks to the audience about his
transcription of Shostakovich's String Quartet No.8

The most intriguing item of Giltburg's recital was his own transcription of Shostakovich's Eighth String Quartet. He made it clear on the outset that string textures were not to be simulated, but worked on the development of thematic material, namely his 4-note motto theme (D-E flat-C-B which spelt his initials in German) that appears in different guises.

Far from being monochromatic, the sombreness of its beginning soon bristled angrily in the percussive 2^nd movement before waltzing away in manic-fashion (3^rd movement) and being stopped cold with explosive bursts (4^th movement). Along the way, quotations from his First Symphony, Second Piano Trio, First Cello Concerto and opera Lady Macbeth Of Msentsk indicated this was a musical autobiography of sorts. Giltburg's riveting performance caught its anarchic spirit perfectly.

Two sonatas followed after the intermission. Scriabin's Fourth Sonata was given a flighty account, floating with gossamer lightness in the slow introduction before taking off like the wind in the frenetic Prestissimo Volando conclusion. Unlike Icarus who fell to earth, Giltburg actually made it to the sun in spectacular aplomb.

Just as incendiary was his view to Prokofiev's Eighth Sonata, the third chapter of his “War Trilogy”, and arguably the best. The surprising lyricism of its first page was merely a premonition of the escalating cataclysm to come. Giltburg mustered these contrasts expertly, making each transition to outright conflict starkly etched and totally believable.

Similarly, the gentle balletic minuet of the 2^nd movement became fodder to the lead-spitting finale, where its unceasing machine-gun rattle was only matched by Giltburg's no holds barred manoeuvres to its thrilling and devastating end.

The tumultuous applause was reciprocated with three encores, two Rachmaninov charmers (transcriptions of Kreisler's Liebesleid and Franz Behr's Lachtaubchen, the latter also known as Polka De V.R.) sandwiching Prokofiev's coruscating Suggestion Diabolique. In a nutshell, elegance and violence formed the tandem that defined Russian piano music.  

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.   

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS @ SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL PIANO FESTIVAL 2015

The line-up for the Singapore International Piano Festival 2015 (25-28 June 2015 at Victoria Concert Hall) has finally been publicised, and it looks very interesting, with recitals by world-renowned artists like Imogen Cooper, Olli Mustonen, Lars Vogt and the phenomenal young Czech pianist Lukas Vondracek.

In a rather self-conscious act of political correctness and self-censorship, the publicity material which trumpets Romantics & Nationalists has committed a grave sin against art. Look at the pamphlet above and the banner below. It was creative to use one of Eugene Delacroix's most famous and emotive paintings, Liberty Leading The People, but what have the censors done to it?

  

The proverbial fig-leaf now takes the form of a gigantic rose that seems to erupt from the chest of Liberty, like some floral version of Ridley Scott's Alien. And the flag she carries is no longer the Tricolore but in bright Socialist red. So is this Liberty leading the Bolsheviks? (Perhaps it makes some sense that the Tricolore was not used, as there is no French music in the entire 4-evening series, while there is a whole evening of Prokofiev.)

Here is the original painting:

What I have now done is to restore the publicity material to what it should have been.

Voila! Now we have the breast of both worlds. So enjoy the titillating piano music in revealing performances, and boob your tickets soon to avoid disappointment.

www.pianofestival.com.sg