4 HAND PIANO CONCERT
Helen Lee & Tong-Il
Han, Piano
Tuesday (19 February 2013 )
This review was published in The Straits Times on 21 February 2013 with the title "Audience troop on stage with placards declaring love for piano duo".
It is a supreme irony that Franz Schubert
(1797-1828), one of the greatest composers ever lived, never got to hear his
greatest works performed in concert. In his lifetime, he was known primarily as
a song-smith, and was of minor importance compared alongside the giant
Beethoven. Much of his music was heard in home concerts, known as
Schubertiades (below), and enjoyed by a small group of his friends and colleagues.
It was in this same informal spirit that the Korean
husband-and-wife duo of Helen Lee and Tong-Il Han presented an all-Schubert
recital for piano four hands. Lee had been a piano lecturer at the Institute of Education Nanyang Technological University Korea USA
It mattered little that Lee took on the primo
and Han the secondo parts of the duets. Schubert’s pieces are so intricately
woven that both roles are equally important and vital for the success of a
performance. In that respect, the duo lived and breathed as one throughout.
The gentle lilt in the popular Fantasy in F minor (Op.103) was
delicately coaxed, and its incipient melancholy soon built up to stout defiance
as the temperature gradually rose. Amid all this, it was a pleasure to hear its
unbroken chain of melody passing back and forth, seamlessly between each
pianist, while maintaining a steady pulse and underlying tension.
That was only the appetiser to the main course,
a rare performance of the monumental Sonata
in C major (Op.140), also known as the Grand
Duo. Its symphonic scope, four movements running over 40 minutes, led
Schumann into thinking it was an arrangement of a yet-to-be- written symphony. Joseph
Joachim later orchestrated it, and listeners gained a tenth Schubert symphony.
Its longeurs
passed ever so swiftly in the hands of Lee and Han. Tempos were well judged,
and repeats were omitted for the expansive first movement. More importantly,
the lyrical quality of the themes was well projected on the Fazioli grand piano
and the tendency to percussiveness minimised. The throbbing beat in the
Beethovenian second movement – not exactly a slow movement – was palpable, as
was the injection of audible humming, clearly from a male voice.
The Scherzo
could have done with more lightness, and here fast equated with loud. The
Hungarian-flavoured finale brought back the air of fantasy, closing with the
typically witty gambit of searching for definite ending chords. This spirited
show was followed by an encore, the familiar Military March No.1.
The audience clapped along, and several members
trooped on stage, marching uncoordinatedly and bearing placards declaring their
love for the duo. This was an unabashed and spontaneous show of support, echoing
after last Saturday’s events at Hong Lim Green. Who said Singaporeans were apathetic and undemonstrative?
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