I went to Juilliard's Paul Hall on Wednesday afternoon to hear a piano recital, the first of the spring term, sponsored by the Piano Performance Forum. There were four pianists on hand ready to follow one another at this roughly 75 minute recital that featured the works of a number of different composers from both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and there was even, at the very beginning, a piece from the twenty-first.
The program opened with pianist Angie Zhang performing works by Lowell Liebermann and Beethoven. First came Liebermann's Two Impromptus, Op. 131. While this may not have been a premiere, the 2016 pieces were so recent that, according to the composer's website, the work will only be "available to the public after June 2017." They were commissioned by the Stecher and Horowitz Foundation for the 2016 New York International Piano Competition and were marked as follows: I. Limpido con molto rubato; and II. Molto lento e sereno. I have not heard a great deal of Liebermann's work, but I found these strongly reminiscent of his nocturnes in their haunting Romanticism.
The work that followed was Beethoven's Sonata No. 18 in E-flat major, Op. 31, No. 3 (1802). This was a transitional piece written at the very beginning of the composer's middle period. In some ways, it appeared to look back to earlier and happier days. This was most evident in the third movement's graceful minuet, marked moderato e grazioso, the last Beethoven would ever write for a sonata and a throwback to the eighteenth century that had now closed as irrevocably as the first part of Beethoven's career. The No. 18 was also the last of the sonatas to have been written in the traditional four movements. But even though the overall mood of the piece was lighthearted - there weren't any slow movements to weigh things down - there were signs of changes to come, most notably in the scherzo's abandonment of ternary form. It was a difficult piece that here was performed brilliantly.
The next pianist, Thomas Steigerwald, played only one piece - Scriabin's Sonata No. 5, Op. 53 (1907). I had heard this same piece performed by the same musician at another Juilliard recital in November. At the time I had compared the work to composer's Sonata No. 3, which I had heard the month before, and had noted the difference in style between that earlier work and the No. 5, written some ten years later. While the No. 3 was a thoroughly Romantic piece and still deeply indebted to Chopin's influence, the No. 5 was much more modern and displayed a mystical inclination. This was not at all surprising considering that it was written at approximately the same time as the revolutionary Le Poème de l'extase. Scriabin himself, when he completed the sonata, thought it the best work he had ever written. It was certainly not an easy piece to perform - Sviatoslav Richter had termed it "the most difficult piece in the entire piano repertory..." - but the pianist did quite well with it just as he had at the earlier performance.
The third pianist to take the stage was Wenting Shi. She began with three Études-Tableaux from Rachmaninoff's Op. 33 - the No. 2 in C major, the No. 5 in E flat minor, and the No. 8 in C sharp minor. Like the Preludes of Op. 32 composed a year earlier, the Études-Tableaux were miniatures that sought to evoke a given mood that was different for each. They had a disarmingly simple sound that belied the extraordinary virtuosity needed to perform each successfully. It's worth noting that Rachmaninoff actually composed nine Études in 1911 but chose to include only six when the Op. 33 was first published in 1914. The No. 5 in E flat minor was only included posthumously in the series but did not seem out of place at this performance
After the Rachmaninoff, the pianist then played Stravinsky's Firebird Suite in a transcription by Guido Agosti. Stravinsky actually arranged three distinct orchestral suites at different points in his career, and I am not entirely sure on which Agosti's transcription was based, though it seemed too short in length to comprise all the movements contained in any one of the three suites. In general, I did not find the arrangement for solo piano as effective as those for full orchestra but that might just have been a matter of personal taste.
The final performer was pianist Yuchong Wu who closed the program with works by Chopin and Gounod. He began with Chopin's Nocturne in B major, Op. 9, No. 3 (1831). While one has a preconception of Chopin's nocturnes as graceful wisps of music, this piece was actually in ternary form and so divided into three parts; in contrast to the outer sections, the inner section had a much more militant mood. This was most likely a reflection of the composer's increasing sense of patriotism that had been first stirred by the failure of the November Uprising in Poland the year before and only been made more intense by Chopin's enforced exile from his homeland.
The work that closed the recital was Gounod's Waltz from Faust as transcribed by Liszt. Like many fervent Christians, Liszt was captivated by the idea of the devil and in 1859, the same year Gounod wrote Faust, had already composed the first of his Mephisto Waltzes. It was only natural then that he should have been attracted to Gounod's most successful opera. Strictly speaking, the transcription contained music not only from the waltz scene that concluded Act I but also from Faust's and Marguerite's duet in Act II. The pyrotechnics at the end were intended to provide the pianist an excellent chance to display his or her virtuosity; at this recital Yuchong Wu took full advantage of the opportunity to give the audience a dazzling display of his talent.
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