PAUL YE Piano Recital / JEFFERSON DARMAWAN Piano Recital / Review

 

PAUL YE Piano Recital 

Victoria Concert Hall 

Monday (22 April 2024)

JEFFERSON DARMAWAN 

Piano Recital 

Esplanade Recital Studio 

Thursday (25 April 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 27 April 2024 with the title "Two pianists, but one pulls off flawless show".

This season has been raining piano recitals, and the tide will not be stemmed for a long summer ahead. Monday evening saw the Singapore debut of Chinese pianist Paul Ye, presented by Kayserburg Pianos. Performing on a Kayserburg concert grand specially flown in from Guangzhou, he opened with Ludwig van Beethoven’s very popular Sonata No.23 in F minor (Op.57), better known as the Appassionata Sonata. 

Ye displayed the requisite bravura to make this indestructible warhorse tick, not least in its furious finale of perpetual motion. He was equally at home in three Chinese pieces, including the famous Ode to the Yellow River (from the infamous Yellow River Concerto), Liu Zhi’s My Motherland (with spectacular guzheng-like sweeps) and best of all, Wang Jianzhong’s A Hundred Birds Paying Homage to the Phoenix with its clever mimicry of birdsong. 

Photo: Kayserburg Piano School

He however had mixed fortunes with a second half of Frederic Chopin hits. Two Waltzes, in B flat major (Op.18) and E flat major (Op.34 No.1), were slickly delivered with delicious rubato applied. The Barcarolle (Op.60) was mostly over-pedalled, smudging many a lyrical line. The familiar Scherzo No.2 (Op.31) went swimmingly but the less-often heard Scherzo No.3 (Op.39) suffered an uncharacteristic lapse, sending him into a nightmarish repetitious loop that seemed interminable. 

Redemption was at hand in Andante Spianato & Grande Polonaise (Op.22), which had a singing quality and rhythmically exciting romp to close. His three encores homed in on popular culture, with music by Hans Zimmer (Interstellar), Klaus Badelt (Pirates of the Caribbean) and Yiruma’s River Flows In You, bringing him the cheers from a large and noisy audience. 

When box-office figures do not dictate, an artist is given more license to practise creative programming. Such was the case of Jakarta-born Jefferson Darmawan, professionally qualified pianist who is also a scientist / research officer at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR). 

His recital on Thursday saw the Singapore premiere of Russian pianist-composer Nikolai Medtner’s Sonata in E minor (Op.25 No.2), also known as the “Night Wind” after a poem by Fyodor Tyutchev. 

This is the longest and most taxing of Medtner’s 14 sonatas, a single movement playing for some uninterrupted 35 minutes. That Darmawan committed all this to memory was admirable enough, but what beggared belief was the extremely demanding execution that came close to being faultless. He had fully grasped the concept of sonata form, working on its two recurring motifs in a manner that was both convincingly logical and inexorable. 

Its technical challenges, too many to name, were negotiated without fuss, and there was never a resort to longeurs. Time just passed swiftly when everything goes so singingly. The obligatory Chopin came in the form of three Etudes from Op.25, which were more than comfortably surmounted. 

The all-French first half of Darmawan’s programme opened with Gabriel Faure’s Nocturne No.6, another rarity where an elusive lyricism emerged from seemingly chromatic pages. More familiar were the five movements from Maurice Ravel’s Miroirs, impressionist masterpiece where he summoned the imagination to vividly conjure evocations of night moths, mournful birds, ocean swells, Spanish dances and myriad bell sounds. 

His encores were just as varied, a canny nod to his homeland in Leopold Godowsky’s clangourous Gamelan from Java Suite, and the graceful central Minuet movement from Ravel’s Sonatine. 

If pressed to choose between which pianist this listener would return to for another recital, the choice is clear: Darmawan wins with both hands down.