I OWE MY LOVE OF CLASSICAL MUSIC TO GARY GRAFFMANN

 

Gary Graffman making a point.
Photo taken in Hong Kong, 2016

I OWE MY LOVE OF CLASSICAL 

MUSIC TO GARY GRAFFMAN

It is with much sadness that we learn the death of American pianist Gary Graffman (1928-2025) on 27 December. He was 97 years old. Gary Graffman was the reason why I fell in love with classical music, and to him I owe a debt of gratitude.

Remember this cover?
Mine was a bootleg copy of this cassette.

It was 1979, and with pocket money saved up I was beginning to discover the joy of music. Those were the days of cheap $2 cassette tapes (now known as a mixed tape) that were sold at almost every street corner in Singapore. It was at one such shop in Dhoby Ghaut which also sold tropical fish (a site now occupied by the School of the Arts) that I bought a cassette titled Rachmaninoff’s Greatest Hits. The main work was his Second Piano Concerto, which may be described as the “sound of falling in love”. I was immediately smitten by the Russian Romantic composer’s bittersweet melodies and luscious orchestration, and played that tape over and over until it squeaked terminally. The performance was bold yet tender, speaking with an immediacy, voice and presence that swayed me intoxicatingly into the “dark side”. As if on drugs, I had been hooked forever. The pianist was Gary Graffman, partnered by the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein.

Another version of the album on CD,
complete with Malaysian copyright sticker.

This music followed and haunted me over the years, and I bought multiple versions of that 1964 Columbia Masterworks recording after the old $2 cassette gave up its life, including another bootleg cassette in Kuta Beach, Bali and that too soon wore itself out. Then, I got the CD version in its various guises, including the same record but with a different cover in Kuala Lumpur International Airport. By some stroke of fortune, I was gifted the LP of the greatest hits album with the original iconic artwork of the series by former Singapore Lyric Opera general manager Ng Siew Eng. Now I have many CDs, the sole LP while all the cassettes had gone kaput.

That same Rach 2 recording,
but in different CD guises.

The original vinyl recording.
Photo taken in Hong Kong on 14 October 2009,
Gary Graffman's 81st birthday.

My wish of seeing Gary Graffman perform with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra never came to fruition, as he developed focal dystonia of the right hand that disrupted his career during the early 1980s. Then he transitioned into a career of teaching the piano (at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute), also becoming a serious collector of Asian art. Among his many students whom I was fortunate to see perform were Lydia Artimiw and the young Chinese triumvirate of Lang Lang, Yuja Wang and Haochen Zhang. He was always proud of his students, and would never be fazed by any criticism of them. To every adverse comment on LL, he would just add, “And he’s so much more than that”.

Notice that Lang Lang's autograph
is far bigger than Gary Graffman's.
The Gary Graffmann Sony Classical box-set.

GG with Yuja Wang

GG with Haochen Zhang

GG with the young Tengku Irfan (Malaysia)
and Aristo Sham (Hong Kong) in 2009,
after hearing the youngsters improvise.

I finally got to meet my musical idol in 2005, at the 1st Hong Kong International Piano Competition where he was a jury member (alongside other piano luminaries like Leon Fleisher, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Vladimir Krainev). He was a regular presence at the Chopin Society of Hong Kong’s festivals and events. In 2006, I finally got to see him perform a recital of left hand solo repertoire and Erich Korngold’s Suite for piano quartet at the HK Cultural Centre. 

GG (extreme right) and the jury of the 2008
Hong Kong International Piano Competition
headed by Vladimir Ashkenazy.

He also gave an illuminating talk about his life in music at the Society’s breakfast meeting, the proceedings which have been described here:

pianomania: Breakfast with GARY GRAFFMAN (December 2006)

At the same event, he also autographed my copy of his autobiography I Really Should Be Practising, a candid, witty and self-deprecatory account of his life till the early 1980s. Its title alone could easily describe the state of all of us would-be piano players.

Sometime in 2009, I was asked to accompany him in a taxi from the Peninsula Hotel to City Hall Concert Hall where a concert of The Joy of Music Festival was to take place. That was, for me, the greatest honour thought possible, and within that 20 short minutes, I went on to regale him on how his Rachmaninoff recording had changed my life forever. He sat there quietly, probably wondering how many times he had heard all of this before. After finding out I was from Singapore, he warmly recounted a former Singaporean student of his who had invited him to a concert she was conducting. He had to decline since he was now in Hong Kong. That Singaporean was the conductor Wang Ya-Hui, who is presently based in Taiwan.

A left hand piano recital in The Joy of Music Festival 2009 was covered by yours truly here:

pianomania: THE JOY OF MUSIC FESTIVAL 2009: Gary Graffman Piano Recital / Review

Years later, I was asked to write a blurb to promote Singaporean violinist and Curtis alumna Siow Lee-Chin’s autobiography From Clementi to Carnegie. I was most honoured to find my musings placed in the same page and below that of Gary Graffman’s.

Also notice how great artists
get their message across in far fewer words.

About piano concertos, I finally got to see Graffman perform and these concerts were also in Hong Kong. These included Prokofiev’s Fourth Piano Concerto (in 2008) and Ravel’s Left Hand Piano Concerto (2011), both conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy. Needless to say, those were unforgettable musical events for me.

Gary Graffman after Ravel's Left Hand Concerto
with Vladimir Ashkenazy in 2011.
Andrew Haveron is the young concertmaster.

pianomania: Hong Kong International Piano Competition 2008: Gala Concerts Evening Three

pianomania: The Joy of Music Festival 2011: Concerto Gala Concert

I own many recordings of Gary Graffman of varied repertoire – solo, chamber and concertos – including 20th century composers like Schnittke, Rorem and Skrowaczewski, and these continue to be an inspiration for me. For Graffman, music always came first, and his role as a servant of the great composers and their music will always be a constant reminder to all of us who profess to love music.

GG with Liang Liang,
our last selfie, in 2016.

Ultimate memorabilia:
the only Gary Graffman Rachmaninoff
drinking mug in the world.

Now let's enjoy Gary Graffman 

playing Rach 2 again:

Gary Graffman reminisces 

with Ben Laude

on legendary pianists.

(Posted 18.1.2026)

ILYA RASHKOVSKIY Piano Recital / The Joy of Music Festival 2015 / Review

ILYA RASHKOVSKIY Piano Recital

The Joy of Music Festival

Hong Kong City Hall Concert Hall

Wednesday (14 October 2015)

It is hard to believe that ten years ago, in 2005, 20-year-old Russian pianist Ilya Rashkovskiy was awarded First Prize at the First Hong Kong International Piano Competition. Then I predicted he would go on on win further prizes in further major competitions. This he duly obliged, garnering First Prize at the 2012 Hamamatsu International Piano Competition, and coming close at the Queen Elisabeth (Brussels), Vianna da Motta (Lisbon), Enesco (Bucharest) and Arthur Rubinstein (Tel Aviv) competitions. At 30, he's all done with concours, but what a journey! Listening to his latest recital, he has also matured. Mere technical proficiency has  given way to a certain fearlessness and the ability to “mix it in” with the music, without fearing what the jury might think.

Just to put things in perspective: in Hamatmatsu where he so convincingly triumphed, 4^th placing went to the fellow Russian Anna Tcybuleva. Today, Tcybeuleva is the latest winner of the Leeds International Piano Competition, which just concluded last month.

Rashkovskiy's present repertoire has begun to reflect the inner musician in him. The Russian warhorses still remain, but he has been able to include works that bring out qualities other than outright virtuosity. In a selection of five Rachmaninov Preludes from Op.23, it was the slower ones – Nos.1 (F sharp minor), E flat major (No.6) and G flat major (No.10) – that shone out with an innate lumincescence. Of course, he could still barnstorm in the popular G minor (No.5) and C minor (Op.7) Preludes like before.

Ravel's slender Sonatine was a curious choice, but that was prime opportunity to display restraint and plain good taste. This finely-honed musicality was balanced by the whirlwind of a finale, which showed he could summon the fireworks at will. Even better was Georges Enesco's First Sonata, a rarity if any, which deserves to be heard more often than his First Romanian Rhapsody. It is a three- movement masterpiece of colour and myriad shades, about 18 minutes long, once likened to Dante's Purgatorio, Inferno and Paradiso in miniature.

The nocturnal mood of the opening movement was captured most beautifully, with flickering half-lights amid long shadows, punctuated with violent asides, and the skittish scherzo-like middle movement, which flitted about like the mysterious wisp o' the wisp. The final slow movement, gripping in its intensity and alive with expectancy, capped the finest performance of the evening.

There were two obligatory showpieces in single movements, Scriabin's Fifth Sonata and Prokofiev's Third Sonata. No recording quite matches live performances of the Scriabin, and this listener would gladly experience Rashkovskiy's volatile and highly-charged reading in a concert hall than sit in front of the stereo for Horowitz or Richter. Never has the right hand's chords flown with such mercurial speed and lightness, but being there in person was the price of believing such sleights of hand were indeed possible. Similarly, the Prokofiev was given a thunderous outing, where the abrupt shifts between motoric drive and smooth lyricism where made possible by a superior technique.

Rashkovskiy was joined by fellow Hong Kong winner Jinsang Lee (the 2008 edition of the competition) in Arno Babadjanian's Armenian Rhapsody, which was an enjoyable romp from its melancholic opening to a riproaring dance-like finale. The applause had barely died down, when Rashkovskiy's encore silenced them completely. In the face of such overwhelming virtuosity, it was refreshing to hear some “simple” Chopin, the gentle lilt of his Waltz in C sharp minor (Op.64 No.2). Simply ravishing too.  

JINSANG LEE Piano Recital / The Joy of Music Festival / Review

JINSANG LEE Piano Recital

The Joy of Music Festival

Hong Kong City Hall Concert Hall

Friday (16 October 2015)

Korean pianist Jinsang Lee, 1^st Prize Winner of the 2008 Hong Kong International Piano Competition, is one for unusual repertoire in his recitals. This year his programme connected pianist-composers spanning the East-West divide of the Atlantic during the so-called “Golden Age of the Piano”. The composers included Mischa Levitzki, George Gershwin and Sergei Rachmaninov, all of whom had a Russian or Ukrainian heritage but plied their glorious trade in the West.

Levitzki and Gershwin were exact contemporaries, and both died prematurely from natural causes during the height of their careers. The former wrote only a handful of pieces, mostly in the waltz rhythm, and recycling a little melody which he milked to its max in several pieces. Why not, since its the charming one to be found in his Waltz in A major Op.2. 

Lee played this with much love and tenderness, clearly bringing out the left hand melody amid the right hand filigree. The Arabesque-Valsante and Valse-Tzigane had their moments, but both will have to give way to The Enchanted Nymph, undoubtedly Levitzki's finest confection. Its shimmering opening gradually leads into a waltz (what else could it do?), luxuriating in the ballroom before closing in an enveloping sea of bliss. Charm was kept on high in Lee's delectable performances.

The George Gershwin Songbook contains 18 short prelude-like pieces based on his popular song hits. Lee played all of them, starting with The Man I Love and concluding with I Got Rhythm. Space forbids a detailed description of the performances, but suffice to say, Lee tried to inject some of his own inviduality and ideas into a number of them. Highlighting certain harmonies or melodic lines helped vary the overall tone colour of the sequence. It was difficult to find any routine or boring moment in his treatments of these little gems.

The Rachmaninov transcriptions of Fritz Kreisler's Liebesleid and Liebesfreud are relatively well-known, but how often does one hear them performed in recital? As much as both violin pieces are contrasting, the transcriptions are even more so. There is an improvisatory air to the melancholic Love's Sorrow, which Lee very much took in his stride. Love's Joy was an all-out showpiece, and here he dug in for a virtuosic showing, which despite the vulgarity of the transcription, did not fail to impress.

Giuseppe Andaloro (1^st Prize Winner of the 2011 Hong Kong International Piano Competition) and Ilya Rashkovskiy then joined Lee for the eight Slavonic Dances Op.46 by Antonin Dvorak. These are wonderful salon pieces which make effective Hausmusik for skilled amateurs. Even piano pros are not immune to its delightful charm. Here the concert took on a more informal air, as two pianist played on one keyboard while the third turned the pages. 

For the first five pieces, it was Lee and Andaloro doing the honours, and Rashkovskiy joined Lee for the 6^th and 7^th dances. The performances were unrehearsed, rough and ready but lots of fun and camaraderie between the pianists. Over the years, they have become good friends and this was reflected in the performances. Who cares about the odd stumble, re-start or wrong notes, it was the spirit that truly mattered.

As an encore, all six hands descended for an impromptu performance of Brahms' Hungarian Dance No.1. Its a squeeze when three grown men converge on a single keyboard, and it was a delight to see them cross hands, switch parts, and generally try not to get in each other's way. If this outing, which got the audience roaring in stitches, did not reflect “The Joy of Music”, the name of this festival, I do not known what does.

      

Cello and Piano Recital by GIOVANNI SOLLIMA and GIUSEPPE ANDALORO / The Joy of Music Festival 2013 / Review

Friday (18 October 2013)

Cello and Piano Recital by

GIOVANNI SOLLIMA & 

GIUSEPPE ANDALORO

On paper, this recital appeared like a hodgepodge of seemingly unrelated pieces, from Elizabethan lutenist John Dowland to living Ukrainian jazzman Nikolai Kapustin, with Beethoven, Webern and a pair of Sicilians filling in between. The reality was a sizeable audience, one larger than previous evenings, presenting themselves to witness one of the most stunning displays of cellism, if there were such a word.

The Palermo-born Giovanni Sollima, like Yo-Yo Ma, is a cellist who defies convention and tradition. Although classically trained, he refuses to be pigeon-holed as a classical cellist. Improviser, innovator, inventor and iconoclast seem like more appropriate epithets. Informally attired, sporting eye-glasses and a five o’clock shadow, one would sooner see him in a jazz club or smoky dive rather than a concert hall. His collaborator pianist Giuseppe Andaloro, almost 20 years younger, would be his more-than-able side-kick for the evening, partner rather than accompanist. The first thing they did was to place music scores inside the Steinway grand in preparation of their first piece, an unusual setting of John Dowland’s well-known song Come Again.

Whoever thought this Elizabethan song could be scored for cello and prepared piano? The piano took on an otherworldly timbre, light metallic twangs interspersed with the gently flickering sound of felt-lined hammers striking paper as Andaloro sensitively accompanied Sollima. The cellist, for his part, skilfully improvised with each strophe and variation in what must be an imagination of jazz in the 1590s. Very quirky but highly original.

The most conventional part of the programme was Beethoven’s Cello Sonata in A major (Op.69) and here the classical credentials of both performers in traditional repertoire were on show. Sollima’s opening unaccompanied solo in the 1^st movement had a plaintive quality, and the tone on his 1697 Ruggeri cello was firm and robust. Andaloro’s contribution as an equal partner in chords and running passages was alert and responsive, continuing into the Scherzo with its tricky syncopations and abrupt rhythmic changes.

The duo then sneaked in Anton Webern’s Three Little Pieces (Op.11), very short atonal aphorisms, as a jarring contrast, just before the third and fourth movements of the Beethoven. Besides making one sit up and listen, it was their way of juxtaposing the two Viennese schools in a single sitting. I can’t say it worked wonders for me, but it certainly fooled the audience and hall technicians, who were still waiting for the Webern after the Beethoven (a very good performance, as a matter of fact) had concluded with an emphatic A major chord. The house lights did come on eventually to reveal some red faces.

I had first encountered the name of Giovanni Sollima several years ago when cellist Qin Li-Wei performed his Alone for solo cello as a substantial encore after a concerto performance with The Philharmonic Winds. I remembered liking the piece very much; tonal, accessible and expressive in a brief but profound way, and wondered what else he had written. As it is, there are two musical Sollimas, Giovanni and his late father Eliodoro, composition professor and sometime head of the Conservatory in Palermo. Both Sollima Jr. and Andaloro were among his many students.

The Cello Sonata (1948) by Sollima Sr.(left), despite its date of composition, was a very listenable post-romantic work in three movements. The opening Lento recitativo and ensuing Allegro vivo were based on a motif of a descending fifth, and due to its monothematic nature, never let one forget its musings. This was followed by an elegiac slow movement, full of emotion displayed by Sollima, an Italian Yo-Yo Ma who himself is quite a sight to behold. He and his cello are one and the same spirit, and the sonorities he coaxes from it – full-bodied and deeply breathed - is quite unlike any other. A short but furious Perpetuum mobile closed the work on a brilliant high. Sollima Jr. appears to be a chip off the old block, as demonstrated in his Tema III for his film score Il bell’Antonio, another emotionally charge piece which began quietly and built to an ecstatic high.

The three pieces by Kapustin that closed the concert played like three movement suite with the fast-slow-fast schema. The Nearly Waltz (Op.98) charmed with its insouciant lilt, while the Elegie (Op.96) and Burlesque (Op.97) provided ample opportunity to improvise, and here is the essence of jazz relived. Although the score is provided, it is merely a blueprint for what is heard onstage. Sollima’s rhapsody sounded so free, as if the piece were composed on the spot. Having heard several versions of this movement on YouTube, none matched his spontaneity and expressiveness. At one point, he inserts his bow in between the strings and allows it to rock roughshod over the strings like some demented spiccato. One doubts whether this is indicated in the score, so I guess this is something which Sollima invented de novo.  

Rapturous applause meant he and Andaloro had to offer an encore, and this was a movement from his Bestiary of Leonardo da Vinci, another enjoyable and energetic piece, one inspired by waves. The concert was one journey of discovery, which will not be forgotten for some time to come.  

TWO PIANOS AND TWO CELLOS RECITAL / The Joy of Music Festival 2013 / Review

THE JOY OF MUSIC FESTIVAL 2013

Thursday (17 October 2013)

2-PIANO & 2-CELLO RECITAL by

GIUSEPPE ANDALORO, Piano

ILYA RASHKOVSKIY, Piano

GIOVANNI SOLLIMA, Cello &

MONIKA LESKOVAR, Cello

This was the highlight of this year’s The Joy of Music Festival, and true to form, it did not disappoint. Italian pianist Giuseppe Andaloro, the third 1^st Prizewinner of the Hong Kong International Piano Festival (2011), was making his name as a conductor, composer and arranger, built around a steady career of concertising. This was to be a culmination of all these facets, his own transcription for two pianos and two cellos of Stravinsky’s iconic ballet The Rite of Spring. The original idea was mooted and experimented in concert several years ago, even before his competition win, but after several revisions, this was to the World Premiere of the masterpiece. Hong Kong was to be the lucky beneficiary.

A century after its riotous Paris premiere, the Rite remains a source of fear and trepidation among audiences in Singapore and perhaps also Hong Kong. That might explain the relatively small audience that greeted this concert. Its sheer iconoclasm, violent dissonance and narrative savagery do not sit well with those more accustomed to the prettiness of Mozart or the lush gushings of Rachmaninov. According to Andaloro’s notes, he did not follow Stravinsky’s own bare-bones four-hand arrangement, but instead went back to the orchestral score to craft his transcription, with the intention of making it sound more orchestral. With all the musical details retained, his conception was a tour de force, not just of instrumental virtuosity and sonic projection, but one of originality and love of the music.

Fellow Sicilian Giovanni Sollima’s cello was given the honour of playing the opening bassoon solo. Immediately one realised why the cello was cast into this role. Its sheer range, from guttural plaint in the high registers to low pitched groans and percussive effects, made it a suitable partner for Andaloro’s first piano. Now multiply this by two with Monika Leskovar’s cello and add Ilya Rashkovskiy on second piano, we have a virtual orchestra. Just suspend expectations of a full orchestra, as this arrangement is becomes a new piece on its own terms. The pianos merge into the canvas with quiet chords and do not dominate until the rhythmic huffings and puffings of the Dance of the Adolescents.

The pianos and cellos do not get stuck in their expected (and pre-conceived) roles in this score. Both groups of instruments take their turn in providing melody (or fragments thereof) and rhythmic percussion, and they alternate roles totally seamlessly. Soon one does not actually miss the orchestra, but is taken on a miraculous journey of sound and colour. Given the multitudes of notes encountered, one was not surprised at the physicality and movement demanded of the performers, but that did not include the amazing sight of Sollima abandoning his cello and rushing off to Andaloro’s side to be his third hand! While pounding the bottom A note with his right hand, he swept the bass strings of the piano with a percussionist’s brush. Although the scraping metallic effect did not quite come off, the theatricality of it all was a most appropriate response.   

Although The Sacrifice (Part Two of the Rite) did not employ a similar trick as The Adoration of the Earth, the shock value of the sound continued unabated. The virgin’s dance to the death was built up inexorably, and at its final leap into the abyss, all four performers were firing on all cylinders. If the Chopin Society of Hong Kong were to issue this World Premiere as a CD recording, an accompanying DVD would be imperative. Not only was it visually exciting, the visceral responses that came with experiencing the live act fully deserves to be relived.

Jinsang Lee at the lighting control console
(Photo by courtesy of Jiwon Kang)

Interestingly, there was also a light design element to this performance. Nothing elaborate but it involved changes to the onstage illumination which varied according to the music being played. The controller was one who obviously knew the music and sequences in the ballet, and it came as no big surprise that was Jinsang Lee (above), last night’s pianist.  

If one thought the second half was to be more conventional, one was mistaken. Lutoslawski’s Paganini Variations for two pianos was already well-known. In fact it was the only work played in its original form this evening. Andaloro and Rashkovskiy gave it a good workout, revelling in its playful dissonances, unexpected harmonies and rhythmic quirks. More revealing was Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of the Fawn, scored for two cellos by Sollima. In many ways, it scores above the two piano version, not least because the dreamy harp arpeggios are well brought out, in this case Leskovar reciprocating Sollima’s “flute” solo with much affection. Again, melody and accompaniment changed hands frequently, and the give and take between both players so well integrated to be inseparable.

The final work of the programme was Ravel’s La Valse, arranged by Andaloro for the foursome. Here he retained Ravel’s original score but the addition of cellos gave the work a different complexion. In order for the cellos’ lilt to be better appreciated, tempos built up rather gradually. One criticism of the piano version is that the work climaxed too soon, but not so here. The heartache of Viennese society heading towards destruction in this fatal whirling was not plunged headlong but rather caught on a slippery slope. After all it was some stretch of years from 1855 to 1914. A civilisation does not always implode overnight but often slides into its doom while its members gaze on helplessly. Similarly, this performance was one where the audience was slowly but surely drawn into an inescapable vortex, from which no escape is possible.

The tumultuous final bars were greeted with a storm of applause. What could come after this exhausting outing where La Valse seemed like the perfect mirror image of The Rite of Spring? The foursome reprised the last minute of The Adoration of the Earth, which more than whetted the appetite for the next performance of this masterpiece.   

  

JINSANG LEE Piano Recital / The Joy of Music Festival 2013 / Review

THE JOY OF MUSIC FESTIVAL 2013

Wednesday (16 October 2013)

JINSANG LEE Piano Recital

This evening was the turn of the Korean Jinsang Lee, second 1st Prizewinner of the Hong Kong International Piano Competition (2008), in a programme of piano music inspired by paintings. Jinsang has had an interestingly varied career since his triumph in Hong Kong and the 2009 Geza Anda International Piano Competition (Zurich), having also majored as a piano technician with Steinway and Sons in Vienna. The big question is why become a piano technician when you can play like what he does?

His recital opened with Liszt’s Sposalizio, from the Italian book of his Annees de Pelerinage (Years of Pilgrimage), inspired by the painting Marriage of the Virgin by the renaissance Italian master Raphael Sanzio. It has a simple cantabile melody, which builds up to a big climax accompanied by campaniles and a celestial celebration. Lee brought out its understated beauty with a minimum of fuss, which was contrasted by the more complicated machinations in the next set of pieces, a selection from Enrique Granados’s Goyescas.

These are new to his repertoire, which explained why he had to play from a score, his assistant being none other than Ilya Rashkovskiy (Has there been a more illustrious page turner since Alfred Cortot?). The rhythmic impulse of the opening Los Requiebros was maintained but the sense of flirtatiousness and coquettishness inherent in its subject was underplayed. The Maiden and the Nightingale, often blighted by over-familiarity, went well but Lee had some problems with the Balada - Love and Death. This was the longest and most difficult number to pull off, with its reminiscences of earlier themes and panoply of moods. Its narrative and overall sweep did not quite come off, which are the signs and symptoms that one has not lived with this music long enough. There was a rough and ready edge to the rambunctious El Pelele (The Straw Man), but that provided a spirited and exciting close to the first half.

Rachmaninov’s Prelude in B minor (Op.32 No.10), inspired by a painting by Swiss symbolist artist Arnold Bocklin, opened the second half. Like the earlier Granados, Lee has not got this piece under his fingers yet. Not so the thrills (and trills) and ecstatic outpourings of Debussy’s L’Isle Joyeuse, a musical visualisation of a Watteau painting La embarquement pour Cythere, which glistened with light and bustled with colour. Lee gave an excellent account, which became the prelude to the big work of the programme, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.  

From the opening Promenade, Lee showed he meant business with a confident stride and clarity of his articulation. All the pieces were well characterised; Gnomus was truly grotesque, Tuileries had a playful lilt, while the troubadour sang with sorrow outside The Old Castle. Having heard this masterpiece on countless occasions, allow me to declare that I have never heard Bydlo (the lumbering Polish ox-cart) played this well, each turn of every wheel edging ever closer to some metaphysical doom. It had that kind of effect that seemed to make it the heart of the work itself.

The rest of the work flowed eventfully yet seamlessly. Lee’s playing was full of colour, but what impressed most was his projection of sound. This came most winningly in the highly contrasted concluding segments, from the stark Catacombae and spooky Con mortis in Lingua mortua, to the savagery of Baba Yaga’s Hut and the full magnificence and majesty of The Great Gate of Kiev, with its pealing carillons. Lee did not add any further notes to Mussorgsky’s original, but he made the music stand out as being highly original.

The tumultuous applause yielded that most Horowitzian of encores, Schumann’s Traumerei, its arch simplicity could have not contrasted more with the sound and fury that had come earlier.  

ILYA RASHKOVSKIY Piano Recital / The Joy of Music Festival 2013 / Review

THE JOY OF MUSIC FESTIVAL 2013

Tuesday (15 October 2013)

ILYA RASHKOVSKIY Piano Recital

City Hall Concert Hall

Ilya Rashkovskiy was the first 1^st Prizewinner of the 1^st Hong Kong International Piano Competition in 2005. Ironically, he is also the youngest of the three 1^st prizewinners that have been crowned over the years. Since then, he had gone on to win 1st Prize at the 2012 Hamamatsu International Piano Competition, and has quit the competition circuit for good. His recital was a programme entirely centred on Russian ballet music transcribed for piano.

He began with the Ten Pieces from Romeo and Juliet (Op.75) by Sergei Prokofiev, an established repertoire work. Not all of the pieces sound totally convincing to me, the composer having to reduce the full resources of an orchestra to just 10 fingers. The opening and fast Village Dance is so awkward that some pianists omit it altogether, like Lazar Berman in his Deutsche Grammophon recording. 

Rashkovskiy nevertheless gave it a good workout, never faltering in its endless sequence of turns and whirls. The fast movements came off less well than the slower ones. The hectoring Masques, feuding Montagues and Capulets and mischievous Mercutio have that tendency to sound percussive, even under hands as good as Rashkovskiy’s, which was why much relief was brought on by Friar Lawrence, Dance of the Girls with Lilies and the final Romeo and Juliet Before Parting. The closing number truly brought out the essence of this set, which formed the first half of the concert.

Rashkovskiy included the Adagio from Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty, as transcribed by Mikhail Pletnev, and that was a stunningly beautiful, right up there with the Andante Maestoso from The Nutcracker. The cantabile melody was brought out with great poise and delicacy, and the movement built up to a true climax, so typically the high point in ballet performances.

One almost wished more of Pletnev’s transcriptions were played, instead of that overwrought Guido Agosti arrangement of Stravinsky’s Firebird. The decibel level and multitudes of notes in the Danse Infernale almost matched those of an orchestra’s, and here Rashkovskiy’s resources were taxed to the limit. Nearly faltering in the mad scramble for fast-paced accuracy, that took the shine off somewhat from the music. Much better was the slow Berceuse with its progression of delicious harmonies lovingly brought out and the romping Finale and glorious close.

The recital closed with more Stravinsky, his Three Movements from Petrushka. I have had just about enough of this virtuoso fodder showpiece, having heard five performances at the Van Cliburn Competition earlier this year. Did Rashkovskiy have anything more to add? 

For starters, he is no longer in “competition mode”, which is why he could afford the luxury of a few dropped notes in the Danse Russe. Yet his reserve seemed limitless, polishing off every thicket of hazards with great relish. The startling harmonies of Chez Petrushka, with that patented ear-wrenching “Petrushka chord”, still had the propensity to shock, while the sequence of dances in The Shrovetide Fair was fearlessly launched into.

In the latter, Rashkovskiy’s pace and accuracy would have to yield to my memories of Vadym Kholodenko’s highly characterised and balletic take at the VC, which had little to do with banging or scraping but the complete experience of dance and poetry in motion. Nevertheless, this was still an enjoyable reading from a fine artist, who I have seen mature over the years from his first Hong Kong triumph all those years ago. His encores were wonderfully varied, first a gentle Mompou Prelude before raising the roof with Scriabin’s Etude in D sharp minor (Op.8 No.12).  Bravos all around.