CD Review (The Straits Times, July 2018)

SVIRIDOV Piano Trio / Piano Quintet

Beethoven Trio Bonn et al

CAvi-Music 8553375 / *****

Georgy Sviridov (1915-1998) was a very well-regarded Soviet era composer, best known for his vocal and choral music, particularly the choral concerto Pushkin's Garland and song-cycle Russia Cast Adrift. 

In this album of his chamber music, first listen to the final track, a piano trio arrangement of the Romance from the 1964 movie The Snowstorm which he scored. This “hit” melody oozes Slavic melancholy and Russian nostalgia, with sobbing gestures from the strings that is hard to mistake.

Then listen to the Piano Trio in A minor and Piano Quintet in B minor, both composed in 1945. Most apparent is the influence of Sviridov's teacher Dmitri Shostakovich. Acerbic wit and vitriol seem to drip from every page. The Trio is in the honoured tradition of Russian “trio elegiaques” (Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov being prime examples) and includes a passacaglia as its slow movement. The Quintet is an even grittier and grimmer work, imbued with an unrelieved gloom.

Russian violinist Mikhail Ovrutsky, cellist Grigory Alumyan and Korean pianist Jinsang Lee, who form the Beethoven Trio Bonn, give totally committed and vividly moving performances. They are joined by violinist Artur Chermonov and violist Vladimir Babeshko in the Quintet, which receives its world premiere recording.

JINSANG LEE Piano Recital / The Joy of Music Festival / Review

JINSANG LEE Piano Recital

The Joy of Music Festival

Hong Kong City Hall Concert Hall

Friday (16 October 2015)

Korean pianist Jinsang Lee, 1^st Prize Winner of the 2008 Hong Kong International Piano Competition, is one for unusual repertoire in his recitals. This year his programme connected pianist-composers spanning the East-West divide of the Atlantic during the so-called “Golden Age of the Piano”. The composers included Mischa Levitzki, George Gershwin and Sergei Rachmaninov, all of whom had a Russian or Ukrainian heritage but plied their glorious trade in the West.

Levitzki and Gershwin were exact contemporaries, and both died prematurely from natural causes during the height of their careers. The former wrote only a handful of pieces, mostly in the waltz rhythm, and recycling a little melody which he milked to its max in several pieces. Why not, since its the charming one to be found in his Waltz in A major Op.2. 

Lee played this with much love and tenderness, clearly bringing out the left hand melody amid the right hand filigree. The Arabesque-Valsante and Valse-Tzigane had their moments, but both will have to give way to The Enchanted Nymph, undoubtedly Levitzki's finest confection. Its shimmering opening gradually leads into a waltz (what else could it do?), luxuriating in the ballroom before closing in an enveloping sea of bliss. Charm was kept on high in Lee's delectable performances.

The George Gershwin Songbook contains 18 short prelude-like pieces based on his popular song hits. Lee played all of them, starting with The Man I Love and concluding with I Got Rhythm. Space forbids a detailed description of the performances, but suffice to say, Lee tried to inject some of his own inviduality and ideas into a number of them. Highlighting certain harmonies or melodic lines helped vary the overall tone colour of the sequence. It was difficult to find any routine or boring moment in his treatments of these little gems.

The Rachmaninov transcriptions of Fritz Kreisler's Liebesleid and Liebesfreud are relatively well-known, but how often does one hear them performed in recital? As much as both violin pieces are contrasting, the transcriptions are even more so. There is an improvisatory air to the melancholic Love's Sorrow, which Lee very much took in his stride. Love's Joy was an all-out showpiece, and here he dug in for a virtuosic showing, which despite the vulgarity of the transcription, did not fail to impress.

Giuseppe Andaloro (1^st Prize Winner of the 2011 Hong Kong International Piano Competition) and Ilya Rashkovskiy then joined Lee for the eight Slavonic Dances Op.46 by Antonin Dvorak. These are wonderful salon pieces which make effective Hausmusik for skilled amateurs. Even piano pros are not immune to its delightful charm. Here the concert took on a more informal air, as two pianist played on one keyboard while the third turned the pages. 

For the first five pieces, it was Lee and Andaloro doing the honours, and Rashkovskiy joined Lee for the 6^th and 7^th dances. The performances were unrehearsed, rough and ready but lots of fun and camaraderie between the pianists. Over the years, they have become good friends and this was reflected in the performances. Who cares about the odd stumble, re-start or wrong notes, it was the spirit that truly mattered.

As an encore, all six hands descended for an impromptu performance of Brahms' Hungarian Dance No.1. Its a squeeze when three grown men converge on a single keyboard, and it was a delight to see them cross hands, switch parts, and generally try not to get in each other's way. If this outing, which got the audience roaring in stitches, did not reflect “The Joy of Music”, the name of this festival, I do not known what does.

      

THE THANK YOU RECITALS / Chopin Society of Hong Kong / Review

THE THANK YOU RECITALS

Chopin Society of Hong Kong

Hong Kong City Hall Concert Hall

Saturday & Sunday 

(25 & 26 October 2014)

Thanks or no thanks to the student demonstrations taking place throughout the civic, business and shopping districts of Hong Kong S.A.R., the 4^th Hong Kong International Piano Competition (originally scheduled to be held from 10 to 27 October) had to be postponed to 2016. The reasons are obvious: any stage of disruption in the competition process would have derailed the entire event, and the safety of the participants and jury (Ashkenazy and Co.) could not be guaranteed. This is especially so because City Hall is just a few hundred meters from the Admiralty / HMS Tamar demonstration site, and any gunfire and explosions would have been easily audible, and we’re not talking about Prokofiev’s piano music.

While jury chairman Vladimir Ashkenazy was conducting the otherwise-idle Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra in free concerts at the HK University in support of the students’ just cause, the Chopin Society organised three free recitals on 24-26 October featuring past First Prize Winners of the Competition, namely Ilya Rashkovskiy (2005), Jinsang Lee (2008) and Giuseppe Andaloro (2011).

Having just arrived from Macau, I was able to catch the second and third evenings of what would be considered a truncated version of The Joy of Music Festival. The attendances were good, just as good as if the competition had taken place in peace and tranquillity, and the response was typically warm-hearted and full of goodwill. The “Thank You” was directed at the good people of Hong Kong (known to put up with loads of governmental and political shite, not to mention the air pollution) and the ever-supportive competition sponsors.

Jinsang Lee opened his recital with unknown and undiscovered Schumann. Almost every note was unfamiliar to me, including a Sonata for Children (Op.118), a movement that would have been Schumann’s Fourth Sonata, the late Gesange der Fruhe (Songs of Dawn), and an earlier version of the finale to the Third Sonata in F minor. Lee played from a score, but his responses were totally musical, from the idiomatic phrasing to the singing tone that is characteristic of Schumann’s music. Just a point of interest, that finale quoted Clara Wieck’s theme that was the subject of variations in the famous third movement, and the original finale is almost as brilliant as the final and definitive version.

Jinsang Lee and his bride Jiwon Kang.
They got married on 9 October 2014.

As a complete contrast to the first half, Lee performed a selection of Poulenc (Pascal Roge terriotory) including the First Nocturne, and two Improvisations, the ones in tribute to Schubert (a Landler) and Edith Piaf. These were beautifully crafted and one was willingly transported to Gay Paree, before he was joined by Ilya Rashkovskiy for Poulenc’s madcap Capriccio for two pianos, yet another one of his cheeky and delectable confections. Still on France, the two winners converged on a single keyboard for Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite. The Balinese-inspired third movement Laideronette, Empress of the Pagodas was pentatonic heaven, with Lee striking the low strings inside the piano to simulate a gong.

Back on two pianos, the duo closed with Saint-Saens’s Danse Macabre and Shostakovich’s Concertino in A minor. The camaraderie between the two was excellent, with give and take being a hallmark of chamber music making. Two became three when Giuseppe Andaloro joined in for an uproarious encore by Vincenzo Panerai, a quick march with lots of hands-crossing and flipping the score over at the half way mark. One could tell that all three pianists were having a great deal of fun.

On the final evening, Giuseppe Andaloro had to grapple with multiple styles in his recital which included three Rachmaninov contrasting Preludes, Stravinsky’s Tango, Scriabin’s Vers la flamme, Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No.13 and three Messiaen Preludes, not an easy feat. He got the notes down pat, but the frequent shifts in musical idioms and dynamics rendered the sum somewhat less than the individual parts. One however cannot but marvel at the Horowitzian energy and incandescence he lent to that little Scriabin incendiary masterpiece.

For the second half, Andaloro provided a treat of a different kind, his own arrangements of Beatles songs (Come Together, Imagine, Across The Universe, Yesterday and Norwegian Wood among them). The last song included plucking the strings inside the piano for a quite magical and quasi-Oriental feel. This was followed up with a Lisztian paraphrase of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, which almost makes one forget the original. The piano duo segment was shorter, with Jinsang Lee joining him in Milhaud’s Scaramouche and Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance for a glittering close.

Andaloro’s solo encore was significant, a World Premiere of Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Mirroring, the work commissioned for the piano competition that had been scuttled. It is an etude-like work on A-B-A form ((hence the mirror reference) where A represented prestidigitation in the manner favoured by Ligeti and B a series of sonorous chords. It is a rather effective showpiece and morceau de concours that would hopefully not be lost to posterity because of the events of Occupy Central.  

The HKIPC is down but not out, and the 4^th edition has been pledged to take place in September-October of 2016. In the meantime, a big “Thank You” is in order for the Chopin Society of Hong Kong for sharing the joy of music happen, even (and especially) in a time of dissidence and strife.

Three 1st Prize Winners of Hong Kong:
Jinsang Lee, Giuseppe Andaloro & Ilya Rashkovskiy.

TWO PIANOS AND TWO CELLOS RECITAL / The Joy of Music Festival 2013 / Review

THE JOY OF MUSIC FESTIVAL 2013

Thursday (17 October 2013)

2-PIANO & 2-CELLO RECITAL by

GIUSEPPE ANDALORO, Piano

ILYA RASHKOVSKIY, Piano

GIOVANNI SOLLIMA, Cello &

MONIKA LESKOVAR, Cello

This was the highlight of this year’s The Joy of Music Festival, and true to form, it did not disappoint. Italian pianist Giuseppe Andaloro, the third 1^st Prizewinner of the Hong Kong International Piano Festival (2011), was making his name as a conductor, composer and arranger, built around a steady career of concertising. This was to be a culmination of all these facets, his own transcription for two pianos and two cellos of Stravinsky’s iconic ballet The Rite of Spring. The original idea was mooted and experimented in concert several years ago, even before his competition win, but after several revisions, this was to the World Premiere of the masterpiece. Hong Kong was to be the lucky beneficiary.

A century after its riotous Paris premiere, the Rite remains a source of fear and trepidation among audiences in Singapore and perhaps also Hong Kong. That might explain the relatively small audience that greeted this concert. Its sheer iconoclasm, violent dissonance and narrative savagery do not sit well with those more accustomed to the prettiness of Mozart or the lush gushings of Rachmaninov. According to Andaloro’s notes, he did not follow Stravinsky’s own bare-bones four-hand arrangement, but instead went back to the orchestral score to craft his transcription, with the intention of making it sound more orchestral. With all the musical details retained, his conception was a tour de force, not just of instrumental virtuosity and sonic projection, but one of originality and love of the music.

Fellow Sicilian Giovanni Sollima’s cello was given the honour of playing the opening bassoon solo. Immediately one realised why the cello was cast into this role. Its sheer range, from guttural plaint in the high registers to low pitched groans and percussive effects, made it a suitable partner for Andaloro’s first piano. Now multiply this by two with Monika Leskovar’s cello and add Ilya Rashkovskiy on second piano, we have a virtual orchestra. Just suspend expectations of a full orchestra, as this arrangement is becomes a new piece on its own terms. The pianos merge into the canvas with quiet chords and do not dominate until the rhythmic huffings and puffings of the Dance of the Adolescents.

The pianos and cellos do not get stuck in their expected (and pre-conceived) roles in this score. Both groups of instruments take their turn in providing melody (or fragments thereof) and rhythmic percussion, and they alternate roles totally seamlessly. Soon one does not actually miss the orchestra, but is taken on a miraculous journey of sound and colour. Given the multitudes of notes encountered, one was not surprised at the physicality and movement demanded of the performers, but that did not include the amazing sight of Sollima abandoning his cello and rushing off to Andaloro’s side to be his third hand! While pounding the bottom A note with his right hand, he swept the bass strings of the piano with a percussionist’s brush. Although the scraping metallic effect did not quite come off, the theatricality of it all was a most appropriate response.   

Although The Sacrifice (Part Two of the Rite) did not employ a similar trick as The Adoration of the Earth, the shock value of the sound continued unabated. The virgin’s dance to the death was built up inexorably, and at its final leap into the abyss, all four performers were firing on all cylinders. If the Chopin Society of Hong Kong were to issue this World Premiere as a CD recording, an accompanying DVD would be imperative. Not only was it visually exciting, the visceral responses that came with experiencing the live act fully deserves to be relived.

Jinsang Lee at the lighting control console
(Photo by courtesy of Jiwon Kang)

Interestingly, there was also a light design element to this performance. Nothing elaborate but it involved changes to the onstage illumination which varied according to the music being played. The controller was one who obviously knew the music and sequences in the ballet, and it came as no big surprise that was Jinsang Lee (above), last night’s pianist.  

If one thought the second half was to be more conventional, one was mistaken. Lutoslawski’s Paganini Variations for two pianos was already well-known. In fact it was the only work played in its original form this evening. Andaloro and Rashkovskiy gave it a good workout, revelling in its playful dissonances, unexpected harmonies and rhythmic quirks. More revealing was Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of the Fawn, scored for two cellos by Sollima. In many ways, it scores above the two piano version, not least because the dreamy harp arpeggios are well brought out, in this case Leskovar reciprocating Sollima’s “flute” solo with much affection. Again, melody and accompaniment changed hands frequently, and the give and take between both players so well integrated to be inseparable.

The final work of the programme was Ravel’s La Valse, arranged by Andaloro for the foursome. Here he retained Ravel’s original score but the addition of cellos gave the work a different complexion. In order for the cellos’ lilt to be better appreciated, tempos built up rather gradually. One criticism of the piano version is that the work climaxed too soon, but not so here. The heartache of Viennese society heading towards destruction in this fatal whirling was not plunged headlong but rather caught on a slippery slope. After all it was some stretch of years from 1855 to 1914. A civilisation does not always implode overnight but often slides into its doom while its members gaze on helplessly. Similarly, this performance was one where the audience was slowly but surely drawn into an inescapable vortex, from which no escape is possible.

The tumultuous final bars were greeted with a storm of applause. What could come after this exhausting outing where La Valse seemed like the perfect mirror image of The Rite of Spring? The foursome reprised the last minute of The Adoration of the Earth, which more than whetted the appetite for the next performance of this masterpiece.   

  

JINSANG LEE Piano Recital / The Joy of Music Festival 2013 / Review

THE JOY OF MUSIC FESTIVAL 2013

Wednesday (16 October 2013)

JINSANG LEE Piano Recital

This evening was the turn of the Korean Jinsang Lee, second 1st Prizewinner of the Hong Kong International Piano Competition (2008), in a programme of piano music inspired by paintings. Jinsang has had an interestingly varied career since his triumph in Hong Kong and the 2009 Geza Anda International Piano Competition (Zurich), having also majored as a piano technician with Steinway and Sons in Vienna. The big question is why become a piano technician when you can play like what he does?

His recital opened with Liszt’s Sposalizio, from the Italian book of his Annees de Pelerinage (Years of Pilgrimage), inspired by the painting Marriage of the Virgin by the renaissance Italian master Raphael Sanzio. It has a simple cantabile melody, which builds up to a big climax accompanied by campaniles and a celestial celebration. Lee brought out its understated beauty with a minimum of fuss, which was contrasted by the more complicated machinations in the next set of pieces, a selection from Enrique Granados’s Goyescas.

These are new to his repertoire, which explained why he had to play from a score, his assistant being none other than Ilya Rashkovskiy (Has there been a more illustrious page turner since Alfred Cortot?). The rhythmic impulse of the opening Los Requiebros was maintained but the sense of flirtatiousness and coquettishness inherent in its subject was underplayed. The Maiden and the Nightingale, often blighted by over-familiarity, went well but Lee had some problems with the Balada - Love and Death. This was the longest and most difficult number to pull off, with its reminiscences of earlier themes and panoply of moods. Its narrative and overall sweep did not quite come off, which are the signs and symptoms that one has not lived with this music long enough. There was a rough and ready edge to the rambunctious El Pelele (The Straw Man), but that provided a spirited and exciting close to the first half.

Rachmaninov’s Prelude in B minor (Op.32 No.10), inspired by a painting by Swiss symbolist artist Arnold Bocklin, opened the second half. Like the earlier Granados, Lee has not got this piece under his fingers yet. Not so the thrills (and trills) and ecstatic outpourings of Debussy’s L’Isle Joyeuse, a musical visualisation of a Watteau painting La embarquement pour Cythere, which glistened with light and bustled with colour. Lee gave an excellent account, which became the prelude to the big work of the programme, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.  

From the opening Promenade, Lee showed he meant business with a confident stride and clarity of his articulation. All the pieces were well characterised; Gnomus was truly grotesque, Tuileries had a playful lilt, while the troubadour sang with sorrow outside The Old Castle. Having heard this masterpiece on countless occasions, allow me to declare that I have never heard Bydlo (the lumbering Polish ox-cart) played this well, each turn of every wheel edging ever closer to some metaphysical doom. It had that kind of effect that seemed to make it the heart of the work itself.

The rest of the work flowed eventfully yet seamlessly. Lee’s playing was full of colour, but what impressed most was his projection of sound. This came most winningly in the highly contrasted concluding segments, from the stark Catacombae and spooky Con mortis in Lingua mortua, to the savagery of Baba Yaga’s Hut and the full magnificence and majesty of The Great Gate of Kiev, with its pealing carillons. Lee did not add any further notes to Mussorgsky’s original, but he made the music stand out as being highly original.

The tumultuous applause yielded that most Horowitzian of encores, Schumann’s Traumerei, its arch simplicity could have not contrasted more with the sound and fury that had come earlier.  

THE JOY OF MUSIC FESTIVAL 2012 / JINSANG LEE and the London Chamber Orchestra Strings / Review

THE JOY OF MUSIC FESTIVAL 2012

JINSANG LEE, Piano with the

London Chamber Orchestra Strings

Hong Kong City Hall Concert Hall

Saturday (13 October 2012)

Korean pianist Jinsang Lee, 1^st prize winner of the 2008 Hong Kong International Piano Competition, now leads a double life of concert pianist and piano technician. He is presently based in Hamburg, where he works at the Steinway and Sons piano plant on a full-time basis, and gives concerts in his spare time in between. He flew in this morning, had a rehearsal with the LCO chamber group, and is expected to perform this evening, before returning to Germany tomorrow. Is he in any shape to perform?

His recital opened with a selection of Préludes by Rachmaninov and Chopin. I wondered how this would fit in with the three pieces by Estonian spiritualist composer Arvo Pärt that followed. All scepticism was dispelled with the G major Prélude (Op.32 No.5) of Rachmaninov, which he played with a glacial slowness, as if in a trance. When the right melody emerged, it came with the gentle pealing of bells as if from a great distance. 

I have never heard this number played so deliberately, but with his exemplary pedalling, it has never sounded so beautiful. In fact, I would go on to add that he makes Horowitz sound choppy and agitated. The G sharp minor Prélude (Op.32 No.12) with its repeated right hand arpeggios tolling over the left hand’s lament gave a different perspective of bell sounds.

Then the penny dropped. Lee’s selections were all about tintinnabulation, a procession of bells in the six solo pieces. The four Chopin Préludes (from Op.28) followed in the same vein; No.23 in F major flowed like spring water, the A flat major chorale of No.18 was backed by warm reassuring chords, the brief No.7 in A major was in gentle mazurka rhythm, before closing with the tempest of No.24 in D minor, which ended with the three fateful (and deadly) low Ds.

This is truly inspired programming, which continued with Pärt’s short solo piece Für Alina, a brief sequence of bell-like notes. At once, Romantic effulgence had given way to the spare and lean harmonies of a different era. Although Pärt belongs to the 20^th and 21^st centuries, his music fondly looked back into the medieval age. 

Violinist Andrew Haveron then joined Lee for two more Pärt classics, Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in the Mirror) and Fratres. Both are static, hypnotic minimalist pieces, with minute variations in harmonies and tonal colour stretched over a course of time which make up the music’s main content. Spare arpeggios from the piano define the former; Beethoven himself had a similar idea in the first movement of his Moonlight Sonata. Violin arpeggios and triads, punctured by single piano octaves occupy the latter. I am not exactly crazy about the minimalists, but both Haveron and Lee play with such conviction that and sympathy that it is hard to ignore.  

Jinsang Lee performed the First Piano Quartet (Op.25) of Brahms on his way to winning first prize at the 2008 Hong Kong International Piano Competition. Here was a reprise, not under the microscope of competition but rather in the warm presence of friends. By this stage of the festival, a sizeable number in the audience had plucked up the courage to seat themselves on the stage, far closer to the music making. I had already made this a regular habit; one definitely feels more involved with the music and musicians within sniffing distance. Here, Lee was partnered by violinist Andrew Haveron, violist Joel Hunter and cellist Pierre Doumenge of the London Chamber Orchestra.

This great work may be viewed as Brahms’s first symphony in all but name. The ideas and themes were conceived symphonically but cast modestly as a work for piano and strings. The first movement is a most substantial utterance, rich in textures and a triumph of the sonata form. The mood is sombre but somewhat lightened by the piano’s presence (this is also echoed in the Piano Quintet Op.34), and these contrasts made it an absorbing listen. 

The tension is continued in the second movement, with a gradual relaxation of weightiness by occasional “lapses” into schmaltz and Lee’s whimsical piano flourish at the end. The hymn-like countenance of the third movement was merely an introduction to a martial episode and its mighty climax. Again the players provided the contrasting themes with body and contour, and one truly feels the tension building up to the big moment.

Note the little boy in the
Chelsea FC jersey
(left background) has fallen
fast asleep in the Brahms.

However all this scarcely prepared one for the furious pace whipped up for the final Rondo alla Ungarese, the most unbuttoned of Brahms’s many Hungarian-flavoured finales. Split-second precision timing defined its frenetic pace with Lee’s flying fingers on the keyboard striding over the string players’ rapidly accelerating dance. The elan in which the players exhibited was simply a joy to behold, culminating with the piano’s cascading cadenza which swept from the top of the keyboard to its depths. 

The coda was a breathtaking show of togetherness, certainly worthy of a welcome encore. However such musical moments are a wholly spontaneous manifestation of top class musicianship, caught at the spur of the moment. A repeat would be almost anti-climactic, because one already knows what to expect.

What can one hope for in The Joy of Music Festival 2013? Another feast of great music and great playing beckons.

    

Glenn Gould's piano technician
Verne Edquist asks Jinsang Lee,
"You want to be a piano tuner
when you can play like thisss?"

Jinsang has a legion of female fans!

The Joy of Music Festival is presented by The Chopin Society of Hong Kong.

3rd Hong Kong International Piano Competition / Prize-giving Ceremony and Gala Concert

3^RD HONG KONG INTERNATIONAL PIANO COMPETITION

Prize-giving & Gala Concert / Hong Kong City Hall Concert Hall

Monday (31 October 2011)

I won’t go into the details of the prize-giving ceremony, which are usually dreary affairs, but this one was at least given some life by the President of the Chopin Society of Hong Kong Dr Andrew Freris, who is also a legit television personality for appearing in shows about money and economic matters. He was joined by Bernie Law, another pundit whom he described as the “acceptable face of capitalism” or something to that effect. It wasn’t exactly David Letterman but at least we were spared of long and boring speeches. The prize-winners came on stage to a minimum of pomp and fuss, shook the jury’s collective hands, and then the music started.

1st prizewinner Giuseppe Andaloro accepts the congratulations from members of the jury.

Dr Anabella Freris also gets a first prize, a kiss from hubby Andrew.

Ilya Rashkovskiy, 1^st prizewinner of the 1^st HKIPC (2005) was up first with a most anti-virtuosic programme thought possible. Yet it does take a virtuoso to invest Mozart’s Rondo in D major (K.485) with a joyful, skipping lightness. He performed all the repeats, each time delighting in Mozart’s witty shifts in modes and tonality. Especially in seemingly light pieces, his propensity to surprise is a hallmark. Rashkovskiy’s crisp and clean lines also served Beethoven’s Seven Bagatelles (Op.33) to a tee. Even in these miniatures, almost wood shavings from a master’s working table, there were hints of greatness. Sometimes dancelike, sometimes lyrical, but always imbued with vitality, there was no shortage of wit and humour from Rashkovskiy’s hands. The idea that these pieces are facile is fallacious, their simplicity does not equate with simple-mindedness. Only a consummate artist can bring these off, and Ilya is just that.

After an interval, it was the turn of Jinsang Lee. The 1^st prizewinner of the 2^nd HKIPC (2008) offered more cerebral offerings. The toccata-like opening of Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue came like the wind, articulated with a feathery lightness that suggested a harpsichord. His delivery was like an eloquent soliloquy, bringing out all the inflexions of speech to the manner born. The fugue was an epitome of clarity, and its celebration of counterpoint a crowning glory of a masterly performance. Massive octaves and chords opened Liszt’s Fantasy on B-A-C-H, where Lee’s all-encompassing mastery of sonority had the listener riveted in their seats. His flying fingers were a marvel to witness, as was the stunning accuracy at that speed. All this would not have counted if it was not matched by a probing mind behind the conception and architecture of the music. It could be said that Lee had built and capped a cathedral of sound, a mighty fortress of contrapuntal grandeur.

This uncanny thread of counterpoint continued into the recital by Giuseppe Andaloro, the newly crowned 1^st prizewinner of the 3^rd HKIPC. Beginning with Shostakovich’s Prelude and Fugue in D minor (Op.87 No.24), it was almost a history lesson on the art of the fugue. Very clean lines distinguished this reading, with the fugue’s subject heard first early into the prelude. The fugue which began simply soon built inexorably into a valedictory climax that brought to mind the titanic finale of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony (also in the same key). Andaloro closed with the fourth movement of Prokofiev’s Sixth Sonata. Here he did not choose to shock and awe with its fusillades of loud dissonance but rather to dwell on its more witty and sarcastic undertones. He flew with the music, and its many percussive bits were not hammered with brute force but rather chiselled with the skill of a Michelangelo. Andaloro showed that Prokofiev’s music was not all about violence, but rich with nuances.

That was not the end of the concert. All three pianists came together to perform the two short pieces, the Waltz and Romance, for six hands by Rachmaninov. Originally written for three young sisters, it was a curious sight to see three grown men crouching by the keyboard to tickle the ivories. Andalaro, who had earlier played Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto for the finals, was given the honour to open the Romance, which had exactly the same notes in the opening of the Andante sostenuto slow movement. The concert ended on a quiet by totally satisfying note, the joy of music had triumphed over the cut and thrust of competition. Isn’t that what music is all about?

The piano version of "The Three Tenors"

THE JOY OF CHOPIN and SCHUMANN Review

THE JOY OF CHOPIN & SCHUMANN
Sofya Gulyak & Jinsang Lee, Piano
University Cultural Centre
Sunday (24 October 2010)

An edited version of this review was published in The Straits Times on 26 October 2010)

This bicentenary celebration of piano music by Frederic Chopin and Robert Schumann, both composers born in the year 1810, turned out to be a three-hour long marathon. In the company of two of the planet’s brightest young piano talents, hours passed like minutes.

The Russian Sofya Gulyak was the first woman to win top prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition in 2009. She proved her mettle in Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto in F minor (Op.21) and Schumann’s Carnaval (Op.9). The former was accompanied in the chamber transcription by Uruguayan composer Carlos Levin, played by a string quintet formed by the National University of Singapore’s Centre for the Arts.

The quintet’s balance of experience and youth proved a mixed blessing, and the amplification of strings was not necessarily to their advantage. Ensemble was often ragged, staying in tune was a struggle and the first violin’s intonation often straying excruciatingly off pitch. It was Gulyak’s indomitable personality and musicality that held the work together, her sense of drive and cantabile admirable, aided by faultless fingerwork.

Left on her own in the Schumann, the composer’s dual personalities of Florestan and Eusebius were given full rein, exulting in passionate outbursts and gentle pleadings. The lead up to the final march and closing climax was thrilling edge-of-the-seat stuff, with all caution thrown to the winds.

The Korean Jinsang Lee, winner of the 2008 Hong Kong International Piano Competition, brilliantly combined the visceral with the cerebral. Instead of launching into Schumann’s Fantasie in C major (Op.17), he warmed up with Beethoven’s song cycle An Die Ferne Geliebte (To The Distant Beloved) in Liszt’s transcription. There was good reason to this impromptu inclusion, as the final Beethoven melody was quoted in the Schumann, its déjà vu appearance lent a moment of magical nostalgia.

The balance of the work was no less fine, with fearsome octave leaps at the end of the second movement overcome with stunning aplomb, and the finale’s rapturous musings and valedictory big tune finding a sympathetic conclusion.

Closing the memorable evening was Chopin’s First Piano Concerto in E minor (Op.11). The quintet acquitted itself far better in this outing, leading to a more cohesive and satisfying performance all round. Lee’s understated virtuosity was matched by his lyrical facilities, and it may be said that the fragile genius of Chopin and Schumann were more than well served.

The Joy of Chopin & Schumann was part of the NUS Centre for the Arts' ExxonMobil Campus Concert series, and proudly supported by The Chopin Society of Hong Kong.

THE JOY OF MUSIC FESTIVAL: JINSANG LEE and the London Chamber Orchestra Quintet / Review

THE JOY OF MUSIC FESTIVAL 2010

JINSANG LEE with the

London Chamber Orchestra Quintet

City Hall Concert Hall, Hong Kong

Wednesday (13 October 2010)

This evening’s programme is unlikely to be repeated for some time to come, as Korean pianist Jinsang Lee, 1^st prize winner of the 2008 Hong Kong International Piano Competition, performed the chamber versions by Carlos Levin of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No.1 in E minor (Op.11) and three concertante works. How often has one heard the Fantasia of Polish National Airs (Op.13), the Krakowiak (Op.14) or the La ci darem Variations (Op.2) other than on complete recordings of Chopin’s music? In a word, never. So this was going to be a total treat.

The three shorter works were performed first, and it was an hour long of early Chopin. That could have sounded dreary, but Lee was no empty note-spinner. He takes great care with every note, and nothing sounds supercilious in his hands. The Fantasia began nocturne-like and then meandered its way into an aria and dance, in a three-part potpourri. Not the most memorable of Chopin (his far more compact Mazurkas have greater impact) but very pleasant, and for once one notices the orchestral part played by a quintet from the London Chamber Orchestra, which sounded like a folk music band. The Krakowiak is more direct in its intentions, and its gallop-like dance joyously leapt out of the pages through Lee’s refined fingers.

The Op.2 Variations were a virtuoso’s paradise, and Lee negotiated its long introduction with much eloquence and the subsequent punishing variations with great aplomb. By the time the Alla Polacca (the final variation) concluded, the hall erupted with enthusiastic applause. It should be noted that on this very same evening, a certain Lang Lang was performing across the harbour at the Cultural Centre. But the far more discerning people in this hall knew they were hearing the real deal.

Chopin’s First Piano Concerto also benefited in its chamber guise. The tuttis were full-bodied, resounding like a big ensemble from just five players. It was a joy just watching double-bassist Stacey Watton (a man despite a woman’s name) providing those deep bass notes with much conviction. He provided the vital heartbeat to the whole evening’s fare. Lee was, as always, unflappable, making music wherever his fingers took him. The cantabile passages were lovingly delivered, and he made most of Chopin’s very tricky piano writing. Amid the mass of notes, Lee had some awry moments but these were expertly ironed over, leaving nary a trace in the memory. It should be remembered that he played nearly 100 minutes of music in total, an amazing feat of endurance, concentration and the will.

And there was even time for two encores. Russian composer Alexander Scriabin paid Chopin the ultimate tribute in his Nocturne in D flat major (Op.9 No.2) for the left hand, which Lee (and the audience) lapped up with great relish. And he closed with Schumann’s touching tribute to Chopin, that little movement from Carnaval, but dressed up with some ear-tickling harmonies for good effect. I am pretty sure that both Chopin and Schumann would not have minded.