WANG
CONGYU Piano Recital
Sunday (15 November 2015 )
This review was published in The Straits Times on 17 November 2015 with the title "Charming recital of French music".
It was with a heavy heart that young
Singaporean pianist Wang Congyu, who spent the best years of his musical
education in Paris, began his recital of the music of French composer Francis
Poulenc (1899-1963). A minute of silence was observed in memory of victims of
Friday evening's Islamist terrorist attacks in Paris. With the audience still
standing, he performed Arioso, Alfred
Cortot's transcription of the slow movement from J.S.Bach's Keyboard Concerto in F minor (BWV.1056).
Clearly affected by the horrific turn of
events, his pulse of the touching piece was unsteady, and this continued into
Poulenc's popular Trois Mouvements
Perpetuels. The perpetual motion of its title proved to be deceptively
difficult to sustain, and the odd bit of rubato
did not seem appropriate in this context.
It got better for the Trois Novellettes and Trois Intermezzi, works of more varied
character. Wang provided the gentlest of touches for the Steinway grand wheeled
in specially for this concert, and his liberal use of the sustaining pedal
smoothed over the more angular edges. A little more incisiveness and élan would have helped, but still, he is
incapable of any ugly sound.
Poulenc's piano music is light and airy,
often accused of being frivolous and prone to fripperies, but is never dull.
How Wang navigated through the 15 Improvisations,
the longest work in the recital, was a testament to his music “story-telling”
abilities. Every short piece is highly characterised in form, sentiment and
mood, and here his variegated approach to each proved to be decisive.
The Seventh
Improvisation achieved a high point
The 5-minute-long Melancolie was Poulenc's longest single movement, yet within it was
a microcosm of his seemingly contradictory personas, befitting his reputation
of being a “rascal and saint”. The programme, which follows Wang's debut CD
recording entitled Charme, closed
with an arrangement of the chanson Les
Chemins D'Amour (The Paths Of Love),
which was shaped beautifully.
Wang generously performed three encores,
the first being American pianist Earl Wild's Homage to Poulenc, in effect a J.S.Bach sarabande dressed up in Poulenc's perfumed harmonies. This was
followed by an alternative version of Chopin's Nocturne in E flat major (Op.9 No.2), which has more difficult and
filigreed right hand ornamentations, and Debussy's First Arabesque. This recital summed up in a word: charming.
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| Je suis Parisienne Wang Congyu with Singaporean musicians who had studied in Paris, composer Tan Chan Boon and duo-pianists Low Shao Ying & Shao Suan. |
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