pianomania: JUHO POHJONEN PLAYS MOZART AND PROKOFIEV / Review

JUHO POHJONEN PLAYS

MOZART & PROKOFIEV

Victoria Concert Hall

Saturday (19 March 2022)

I did not know anything about Finnish pianist Juho Pohjonen before his debut recital here, and I will certainly follow his career and recordings after this. A programme of Mozart and Prokofiev seemed implausible, but it took someone special to make sense of it, besides convincing an audience of its validity. Pohjonen did so with flying colours.

The recital began with Mozart’s Fantasy in C minor (K.475), arguably his most modern sounding (and un-Mozartean) work. Its uncompromising opening with bare octaves and surprising harmonic manoeuvers make for uneasy listening. Not typically classical in style but looking ahead to the Romantic era and beyond, Pohjonen had the full measure of its idiom. The playing was crystal clear and while he brought out a full and rich tone from the Steinway grand, he did not attempt to prettify or smoothen its starkly etched edges. With abrupt dynamic shifts very well brought out, the free-flowing Fantasy served as a prelude to the Sonata in C minor (K.457) which followed attacca, without a break.

Both works share the same key but also a similar opening sequence of notes based on the C minor triad. By contrast, the theme now sounds urgent, and full of pathos befitting one of two Mozart minor key sonatas. Its sturm und drang made this an enthralling ride, alternating between raw passion and lilting lyricism. The slow movement in A flat major – tenderly played - had moments reminding one of the Adagio cantabile of Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata. The finale’s Allegro assai sounds faster than it actually is, which may be attributed to a minor key’s penchant to make everything sound on edge. Pohjonen’s trenchant view, complete with more harmonic surprises in store, positively delivered Mozart’s vision well into the 19^th century.

There was a pleasing symmetry to the programme with the Prokofiev half almost being almost an updated model of the Mozart half, a major sonata preceded by a shorter piece. Prokofiev’s brief Dumka Op.65b is a rarity, only discovered and first recorded in the 1990s although it probably came from his youthful years. Derived from a Ukrainian term, it is a Slavic lament – sad and lugubrious – and filled with interesting harmonic twists, totally befitting the current crisis in the land of Prokofiev’s birth. Written in A minor, it imperceptibly merged into his Sonata No.6 in A major (Op.82), the most brutal of the War Sonata trilogy.

This was a take-no-prisoners reading, with its raw dissonances, pounding jagged chords and pulverising octaves resonating with the forceful impact of mortar fire. Yet this was also a very nuanced performance, balanced by moments of contrasting lyricism. Like in the Mozart half of the programme, these upheavals were very skilfully handled. As if to further flesh out the narrative, the central movements’ dance-like posturings, ironic melodies and a droll slow waltz to cap it all came like some perverse form of ballet. War does tend to distort reality, and none better than the furious finale’s tarantella of death, which was a headlong assault into the abyss.

I remember this as just my third encounter of the sonata within the walls of Victoria Concert Hall, the others presented by Alexei Nasedkin (1982) and Yuja Wang (2010). With a cruel war raging in a distance, this one provided the greatest chill.

The appreciative applause was rewarded with two encores, a luminous reading of Grieg’s To Spring and a Rameau Sarabande in A major, dressed with delicate ornamentations. A fitting conclusion to a truly rewarding recital.