SEASONS OF LIFE / KAJENG WONG / Review

SEASONS OF LIFE

Music of SCHUBERT, SCRIABIN & SCHUMANN

KAJENG WONG, Piano

Atlas Music Co. Ltd.

 

The special administrative region of Hong Kong has produced young news-making pianists over the years, including international competition winners Colleen Lee and Rachel Cheung, Piano Duo Ping & Ting, and Youtube sensation Tiffany Poon. Another name to add to this august list is KaJeng Wong, or KJ for short, who was the subject of the 2010 docu-movie KJ: Music & Life. The award-winning biopic detailed the trials and tribulations of a child prodigy pianist who grows up and faces an uncertain future.

 

This 2020 début recital recording entitled Seasons of Life (or Theatre of Life in the translation from Chinese) is a snapshot of that future. In the movie, the child KJ was quoted, “I want to be a human being”. As opposed to being an automaton, one supposes. This manifesto of humanity comes in three chapters, Departure, Lost and Return, and dedicated to his mother, “for giving breath to my departure, for never being away when I’m lost, and for being home when I return,” as the booklet notes explicitly states.

 

 

The Chinese simply love concept albums and this one has the physical appearance of a pop CD, but strip away the surface, and one gets music-making that is entirely serious. There are however no programme notes on the music, which begins with Schubert’s Impromptu (D.899 No.1) as the opening chapter. The Austrian lieder composer’s songfulness comes through with a heartfelt outpouring of sadness and regret. He enters the maelstrom with Scriabin’s Sonata No.3 (Op.23), nicknamed “States of the Soul”, its four movements representing myriad personal conflicts within an embattled being. KJ has the mystical Russian’s idiom down pat, reveling in his volatility and sensuousness with equal measure.

 

The works get progressively longer, culminating with Schumann’s Fantasy (Op.17). This music speaks of the German Romantic’s longing in the physical absence of a loved one, embodied in the quote of Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte (To the Distant Beloved) at the end of the rapturous first movement. The imperious march in the central movement holds no terrors to KJ’s technical armamentarium, not least its outsized octave leaps, while the valedictory final slow movement represents a heartfelt homecoming. A return to where the heart truly lies.   

 

Harmonically speaking, KJ’s character arc begins in sombre C minor, journeys to remote F sharp minor with its tonal ambiguities, before closing in glorious C major. Although this recital ends in beatific quietude, seldom has there been a sense of all-encompassing satisfaction, having been part of KJ’s hope-filled and angst-ridden journey of life.   

 

Thanks go to Phan Ming Yen for introducing me to this sensitive, thought-provoking and probing artist through the gift of this CD. Further albums by KJ are to be anticipated with enthusiasm.