Hong Kong pianist MARY WU gives her first piano
recital in Singapore as part of The Asian Pianist Recital
Series at the Singapore Conference Hall on Sunday 25
August 2013
at 7 pm. Her very exciting programme includes Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit, Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, Chopin's Third Sonata and works by four Chinese composers,
Zhou Long, Bright Sheng, Victor Chan and Joyce Tang. PIANOMANIA is chuffed to
catch up with this remarkable and totally personable artist.
Welcome to Singapore, and it must be daunting
to be the first international artist featured in The Asian Pianist Recital Series. You have offered a very varied
and eclectic selection of piano repertoire for your recital.
Thank you so much for the
invitation. It is my privilege indeed to be here to have this occasion to share
some of my absolute favourite music with all of you! Each piece is like a
personal song without words from my heart, from Europe (Germany, Poland and France), America (Gershwin) and Asia (China and Hong Kong). Some are inspired by
poetry, like Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit.
Some are inspired by states of mind and vivid images, such Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, Joyce Tang’s Splashes and Zhou Long’s Hunters' Dance. I hope there is
something for everyone to enjoy.
Maurice Ravel’s Gaspard
de la nuit is the second work in your recital. You were a student of the
legendary Vlado Perlemuter, who himself was a student and personal friend of
the composer. What insights did he impart to you in the interpretation of this
fiendish masterpiece?
Perlemuter worked on the
imagination a lot and encouraged me to look into the poems and sense the
atmosphere, the possibility of images expressed in certain musical parts.
Surprisingly though, he always emphasized how much Ravel preferred to let the
music speak itself rather than putting too much freedom into the music. That is
always a delicate and difficult balance, something which one comes to terms
with and keeps searching for after many years. The balance is difficult because
the poems themselves are rhapsodic and illusionary, especially in Scarbo, the final movement which is
portrayed as the ever changing being, sometimes mischievous, sometimes
horrific, and always mysterious! To be honest, I have been blessed with many
great teachers, whose greatness I did not appreciate enough until I looked back
as the years passed.
 |
Maurice Ravel at the piano,
with George Gershwin standing at extreme right. |
It was Ravel who admitted
and joked that he could take lessons from George Gershwin on how to make money!
Was this the reason for including Rhapsody in Blue in your programme?
More seriously, it is the rhythmic elements and interesting harmonies that
unite and separate these works that is intriguing, is it not?
Ha ha! Ravel was in a way
kind to refuse giving lessons to Gershwin for fear of the American deviating
from his own individual style. Ravel loved jazz, just as Gershwin did, as you
can see in this music. The Rhapsody was
originally written for big band and piano, and played by Gershwin himself. The
sunny rhythmic and harmonic elements are his forté and they always sound so
fresh. As for Ravel, his harmonies and rhythms sound much more modern than
Gershwin's, even though his pieces were written earlier. Harmonically, he
sometimes uses similar jazz-chord formations but put in a much more traditional
form that they sound otherworldly.
Chopin is ubiquitous for
most piano recitals. The Third Sonata in B minor Op.58 is one of his
greatest works. How does one make this overplayed and all-too-familiar music
sound fresh and invigorating?
The reason why the Sonata is played so often is because it
is such great music. With every great work, one discovers something new every
time. Arthur Rubinstein was once asked, after playing Chopin’s Fantaisie-Impromptu 66 times as an
encore, "Don't you find it very boring to play this again?" His reply
was," Why boring? Every time I play it, it is like seeing a new leaf grow
on a tree, fresh and novel," or something to that effect. So in the
similar psyché, reliving the progress of a piece, like retelling a story, can
be different and exciting each time.
One of the pre-requisites
of The Asian Pianist series is to
perform music of Asian composers. You have selected not one, not two, but four
Chinese works, and all Singaporean premieres. Zhou Long and Bright Sheng, both
now based in USA, are fairly well-known names, but not necessarily for piano
music. What are their pieces like?
I came across Zhou Long’s
and Bright Sheng’s pieces more than twenty years ago first in America and then more recently in
Hong
Kong. In discussions, I see that these are personal statements of each
composer. Zhou relived his unforgettable experiences in Manchuria and Beijing in Hunter's Dance (Wu Kui),
while Sheng wrote My Song with an
inner voice that he found in himself.
Stylistically they are
very different. Zhou's dance is based on three notes, used in all different
ways throughout the piece. He mentioned how much he regarded the piano as a
percussive instrument and incorporated the Chinese instruments such as the guzheng and pipa sounds in the music. What impressed me most was its middle
section. It was for him the memory of seeing, while farming in the fields, fire
suddenly break out in a forest, and how herds of deer panted and ran for their
lives. It is a very dramatic piece. Incidentally, Zhou Long was awarded the
Pulitzer Prize for composition last year.
Sheng's My Song is in four movements: slow, fast,
fast and slow. These are like photographs of state of minds: living in the past
(a romantic-sounding melody from Qinghai), joyfulness set in a folk dance, a
metamorphosis of a simple two-note motif (transforming from mysterious to
bombastic) and the last, a nostalgic retrospection.
About the Hong Kong
composers, Victor Chan’s Passion Within came about as a response to the
2003 SARS tragedy that almost paralysed Hong Kong and Asia. How does that translate
to music?
The very fact that he
wrote it just after the fearful and emotional siege of the city, where everybody's
lives, rich or poor, was on the line (and some failed to make it through),
meant that there is some kind of struggling resolution and relief in the music.
The piece is perhaps the most Romantic in style of the four Chinese works.
There are many questioning moments, statements of anxiety and sighs. However
these are interspersed with really relaxed music, sometimes even salon-like
improvisations, casual and free.
We are honoured that
you have chosen Singapore to be venue for the World Premiere of Joyce Tang’s Images, Colours, which was dedicated to
you. The title of this 3-movement work sounds impressionist, and how does the
music move you?
The music is simple yet
captivating, especially the first two movements. The Flowing Streams and Song of
Crystal Light suggest a transparent texture, and yet the momentum and pace
sees choreography and flow to these elegant dance-like pieces. The third piece Splashes is the newest movement. The
style is a lot bolder, and if it were calligraphy, the strokes are thicker and
perhaps more predictable. It incorporates some Spanish rhythms, some improvisational
moments as well as special chosen scales.
Q: The art of the piano
recital is in some risk of dying out, judging by concert attendances around the
work (excepting events by Lang Lang and Yundi, which have a popstar aura about
them). What can artists do to keep this hallowed tradition alive?
Piano music is part of art
that is food for the soul, and a transcendental means to reaching another dimension
of being. Many popular composers such as Bach and Beethoven strived to attain
that. It is certainly not dying out in Hong Kong. Here, and in China, students now learn music
and instruments at an early age. They also play and sometimes compete in annual
music festivals. Some are required to write concert reports and reviews. There
are also many more talks about music, pre- and post-concert discussions. There
are many returnees from universities overseas and many international level
concerts are created. The atmosphere is pretty vibrant and great musicians are
welcomed for their art whatever the repertoire. Government funding is certainly
playing a big part in this development.
Ultimately, it is up to
the individual to persevere and sustain their choice of passion, and the teachers
and educators can help to guide their students to appreciate music more and
discover the treasures to enrich their lives.
Did you know that
the title of your recital RESPLENDANT HARMONIES was a rough translation of your
Chinese name Mei Loc, which essentially means "beautiful music" in
Cantonese?
I think that my
father must have had fun playing a pun with our names. All five daughters have
Loc has our second character-name (San Loc, Gar Loc et al). He loved music but was not allowed to take it as a first
study, instead he was made to study Law.
As you know, the
Cantonese word loc means “happiness”,
and when pronounced ngog, means “music”.
So he hoped we would find both happiness and also music in our lives, I think!
He also avoided using Ng in our
Cantonese surname, and adopted the Mandarin version Wu instead, just as he would avoid ngog. This is so that our names would be more easily pronounced by
people. [Mary’s name would have been Ng Mei Ngoc if Cantonese was strictly
enforced!] At that time, my oldest sister was named Enloc (which means grace
and happiness, or grace and music), when she was born in Shanghai.
The rest of us, born in Hong Kong, just followed suit!
