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CD Review: Tien Hsieh, piano

“Mostly Transcriptions” in Review

Tien Hsieh; Piano Titanic Ti273

Bach-Busoni Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C Major, BMW 564

Schubert-Liszt “Der Muller and der Bach“, D. 795 No. 19 (S. 565); ‘‘Die Schone Mulleri“

Chopin-Liszt Meine Freuden, Op. 74 No. 5

Bach-Liszt Fantasy and Fugue in G Minor, BMV 542

Schumann-Liszt “Widmung” (Myrthen, Op. 25 No.1)

Cortese Elegy (2008)

Schumann-Liszt “Frulingsnacht“ (Liederkries, Op. 39 No.12)

Schubert-Liszt “Litanei auf das Fest Aller Seelen“, D. 343

Liszt “Venezia e Napoli” (Gondoliera; Canzone; Tarantella)

Tien Hsieh

The two exceptions to this “Mostly Transcriptions” CD are the “Venezia e Napoli” triptych from Liszt’s Second Book “Italie” of his work Annes de Pelerinage (Years of Pilgrimage), and Glen Cortese’s Elegy, composed in 2008. Along with the Bach-Busoni, both were handsomely played at Ms. Hsieh’s Weill Hall recital in May 2008 (which I had the pleasure of reviewing in Volume 15 No. 3 of this journal). When I heard the Cortese at its World Premiere, I expressed a desire to rehear the composition. On closer scrutiny, the Elegy is indeed attractive–in a style rather reminiscent of Copland’s vintage period (e.g. “Appalachian Spring”).

I was hoping that Ms. Hsieh would have likewise recorded the rarely encountered and atypically self-effacing Liszt piano transcription of Beethoven’s song cycle “An die Ferne Geliebte”, and perhaps she will on her next CD. But ‘faute de mieux’, I am very pleased that she has returned with her impressively exciting accounts of the Bach-Busoni and also the Bach-Liszt Fantasy and Fugue in G Minor, and the Schumann-Liszt “Widmung” (which was likewise an encore at the end of the 2008 Weill Hall concert). I still retain in my mind’s ear beautiful performances of Beethoven’s Op. 111 and Schumann’s “Humoresque” at that recital.

In commenting upon this recorded anthology, I can reiterate that Tien Hsieh is a formidable virtuoso and also a magnetic musical persona. Her bio says she was born in Taiwan and that she studied with her mother, Sylvia Hsieh (a renowned pedagogue in her own right), and with Dr. Marc Silverman at the Manhattan School of Music (her other mentors were Abbey Simon, Ruth Tomfohrde, Jane Allen and Carol Tafoya). In terms of color, texture and concentration on detail, she immediately makes you sit up and take notice! The opening measures of the Bach-Busoni Toccata, slashing and sparely pedaled, along with the arranger’s clever “Busonifications”, recreate the facsimile of the original organ, with its characteristic squeal and visceral intensity. (I might add that the state-of-the-art fidelity of the recording further enhances the physical allure of this thrusting and appropriate interpretation). (Note too, Ms. Hsieh’s precise articulation of the Fugue).

Her high-Romanticism approach works wondrously well in much of the chosen selections, although just two of the compositions of the “Mostly Transcriptions” roster may be a little ‘too much’: The Liszt version of “Der Muller und der Bach” seems a trifle fussy, with the melodic line overstretched, and Ms. Hsieh, in my opinion, allows the accompaniment roulades to be a distraction away from the gravitas, and at the expense of ongoing simplicity. (There is a remarkable recording on Vista Vera by the Soviet pianist Rosa Tamarkina, (1920-1950), who died tragically from cancer at the age of 30). Likewise, the Van Cliburn RCA recording of his signature piece, the Schumann-Liszt “Widmung”, also strikes this writer as more ongoing and less finicky than Ms. Hsieh’s.

Liszt’s “Venezia e Napoli” is, to be sure, an intriguing contrast to Jerome Lowenthal’s just released version, Bridge 9307A/C, of the complete “Annees de Pelerinage”, and Lowenthal’s tautly structural interpretation. Lowenthal, who studied with the late William Kapell, makes a wonderful contrast with Ms. Hsieh’s slower, more ruminative take on the pieces. Both extremes make cogent good sense as unquestionably ‘idiomatic’.

All of the remaining items are, in their various ways, miraculously and convincingly recreated. Note, too, that the total timing of 77:15 is uncommonly generous. The disc is warmly recommended.

by Harris Goldsmith for New York Concert Review; New York, NY

Maximilan Anikushin and Friends in Review

Samuel Barber Centenary Recital

Bruno Walter Auditorium

Lincoln Center; New York City, NY

November 18, 2010

Maxim Anikushin

The splendid pianist Maximilan Anikushin, with his friends, mounted a welcome and comprehensive retrospective to honor the centenary of the American composer Samuel Barber in the midst of bicentennial tributes to Haydn (d. 1809), Mendelssohn (b. 1809), Chopin and Schumann (both born in 1810.) (Orage warning: the Liszt bicentennial will be coming down the pike—prepare for another onslaught imminently!) Barber’s beautifully crafted music richly deserves celebration and it is, without question, more audience-friendly than Elliot Carter, who is still with us (Barber died in 1981.)

The first half of the program was devoted to Barber’s solo piano works, commencing with his most famous and impressive piece, the sonata, commissioned by Vladimir Horowitz, who premiered it in 1949 and subsequently recorded it for RCA Victor. Mr. Anikushin’s beautifully written program annotations interestingly relate that the composer had initially wanted the work to be a three movement sonata, but Horowitz convinced him that the piece needed a “very flashy last movement.” This last movement caused Barber much frustration. After months with no progress, Horowitz telephoned Barber and, hoping to inspire him, called him a ‘constipated composer.’ Barber became angry and wrote the entire last movement (the Fuga) the next day! This was in June 1949, nearly two years after the work was commissioned.

The Sonata was appropriately followed by the four Excursions–vintage 1945–also in its day quite popular; Nadia Reisenberg performed them at her 1947 Carnegie Hall recital (published by Bridge Records, 9304A/B) and gave them to countless pupils. Next came a fine nocturne written in 1959 to honor John Field (not Chopin as one might have thought). The Three Sketches were the juvenilia of a talented teenager: A Love Song “To My Mother”, Tempo di Valse (1924); To My Steinway Number 2201 (Adagio, 1923); and “A Minuet to Sara”, (1923). Barber confesses that he “borrowed” its theme from Beethoven’s notoriously popular Minuet in G Major.

Anikushin’s elegant performances were models of style, humor and– when called for–brilliantly clean, incisive technique; architecturally crystal clear and also amply subjective without hypertension. Anikushin told me that he loves Barber, and his adoration and enthusiasm were brilliantly self-evident.

Anikushin, whose May 9, 1999 debut at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall earned high praise from this reviewer in New York Concert Review: “…undoubtedly destined to enter the annals of his generation’s important young pianists”, has studied with Y.I.Batuyev, Milton Salkind, Oxana Yablonskaya and Solomon Mikowsky, and holds Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral degrees from the Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music.

After intermission, Dr. Anikushin gave a vibrant and memorable account of the 1932 Sonata for Cello and Piano, partnered by Adrian Daurov, who is currently at Juilliard. The Canzone for Flute and Piano, Op. 38a of 1961, was played by flutist Mayumi Yokomizo with a big, luscious tone (it may have been her gold instrument that partly influenced me!) Finally, there was a group of Five Songs: “Promiscuity”, Op.29, No.7 (1953), “The Secrets of the Old”, Op.13 No. 3 (1938), “Sure on this Shining Night”(1938), “A Nun Takes the Veil”, Op. 13 No.1 (1937) and “The Desire for Hermitage”, Op. 29, No. 10 (1953), communicatively sung by Megan Moore, an alumna of Hope College and the Manhattan School of Music.

by Harris Goldsmith for New York Concert Review; New York, NY

Solomon Mikowsky Dedication Concert in Review

Solomon Gadles Mikowsky Recital Hall, New York, NY

Manhattan School of Music

October 3, 2010

Dr. Solomon Mikowsky

“Turnabout is fair play”, the saying goes. Frequently, an institution will pay homage to a great and distinguished member of its faculty. But this time, Solomon Mikowsky – who has certainly earned a tribute for his years as a renowned piano pedagogue who has produced many fine artists (and competition winners) – honored the Manhattan School of Music with a beautiful and heartwarming gesture: a gift of a superb recital hall, replete with two Steinway concert grand pianos and a capacity for audio and video recording (plus a third Steinway Model B grand for his adjacent studio). On Sunday afternoon, October 3^rd, I was honored to be present for the grand opening festivities of the Solomon Gadles Mikowsky Recital Hall on the third floor of the MSM. Dr. Mikowsky’s tribute was not only to this school, but also in honor of 12 of his former and present pupils who held forth with a fine concert by way of a retrospect. The live recital commenced with a recorded performance of Bach’s Fantasy and Fugue in A Minor as performed by Mikowsky at the age of fourteen. In front of the audience was a photograph of the fledgling virtuoso (what a handsome devil he was!). Later on, at the behest of many of his appreciative charges, Dr. Mikowsky (who was going to remain silent) played a Galuppi Sonata with elegant taste and good tone, showing us all that he can still “do” as well as teach!

Dr. Mikowsky was born Solomon Gadles in Cuba of Russian-Polish parentage and his mother’s maiden name was Mikowska. His early musical training was with Cesar Perez Sentenat, who had studied in Madrid with Cubiles and in Paris with Joaquin Nin, a pupil of Moszkowski, himself a pupil of Liszt. Later, he earned his degrees at the Juilliard School, working with Sascha Gorodnitzki (Bachelors and Masters degrees) and a doctorate from Columbia University. Frequently invited to serve on the juries of important international piano competitions, he has given master classes worldwide, and is the author of a book on nineteenth-century Cuban music.

Dr. Solomon Mikowsky with his students. Photo Credit: Brian Hatton

The impressive recitalists included two Domenico Scarlatti sonatas (A Minor, Longo 241, Kirkpatrick 54; and A Major, L. 395, K. 533) played with brilliant note-perfect fluency by Inesa Sinkevych, but with one gaffe: the printedprogram attributed them to Domenico’s father, Alessandro, 1660-1725 (who wrote vocal music!); Liszt’s F Minor Concert Etude, La Leggierezza (Ian Yungwook Yoo); Chopin’s C-sharp Minor Etude, Op. 10, No. 4 (Kookhee Hong); Albeniz’s Asturias (Jovianney Emmanuel Cruz); Albeniz’s Evocacion from Iberia (Gustavo Diaz-Jerez (who had originally intended to play El Puerto from the same work); Lecuona’s Cordoba (Yuan Sheng, who played lustily, although I have heard him play Bach wonderfully well and also had glowing words for his Schubert B flat Sonata, D. 960); the ubiquitous Albeniz Tango in Godowsky’s gussied-up arrangement (Ren Zhang); Scriabin’s Etude in C-sharp Minor, Op 8, No. 12 (Alexander Moutouzkine); Ravel’s “Pavane pour une infante defunte” (Youngho Kim); Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in G Major, Op. 32, No. 5 (Wael Farouk, a Shura Cherkassy look-alike who I glowingly reviewed in New York Concert Review for his account of Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto with the MSM orchestra last year); Busoni’s Sonatine super Carmen No. 6, K. 284 (Kirill Gerstein, a recent Gilmore Artist Award and Avery Fisher Grant winner); and finally the Aria from Bach’s Goldberg Variations (Simone Dinnerstein; truly an Aria da Capo; the first time I heard her play at the tender age of 11, Ms. Dinnerstein was a pupil of Dr. Mikowsky and she has many accomplishments to her credit in the intervening years—subsequent studies with Herbert Stessin, Maria Diamond (a student of Artur Schnabel) and Peter Serkin. Herself-produced CD of the Goldberg, now available on Telarc, has been acclaimed a best-seller).

I must comment that the room can accommodate an audience of 50, and that its acoustics are ideally crystal clear, absolutely perfect for the obvious ideals of Dr. Mikowsky’s taste for extreme digital clarity and articulation, Spartan and judicious pedaling and discipline, as opposed to an often esteemed and encountered murkiness that could (and often does) hide a multitude of sins by less technically adroit students.

The concert was followed by a lavish reception and dinner, capping a joyously memorable and touching occasion. Congratulations to all, and especially to Solomon Mikowsky!

by Harris Goldsmith for New York Concert Review; New York, NY

Hiroko Sasaki, piano

Hiroko Sasaki, piano
Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York, NY
April 28, 2010

Hiroko Sasaki

One of this writer’s fondest memories was the distinguished debut of a young Japanese-born pianist, Hiroko Sasaki, on May 8, 2003 (my review of that Weill Hall concert appeared in volume 10, No. 3 of this journal). Ms. Sasaki has continued to confirm my initial impression that she was “a true artist at work.” She sounded as splendid as ever at one of her return appearances under the auspices of the Abby Whiteside Foundation’s series on April 20th in the same venue. Indeed, the pianist’s program of both books of Debussy’s Preludes consolidated that same concert of seven years ago that had included works of Haydn, Chopin and the first volume of the Debussy (even the encore, Le Petit Berger, that I had called a perfect ending the first time, was repeated).

Ms. Sasaki, who left her native Japan at age 13 to join the Yehudi Menuhin School, and subsequently earned her degree at The Curtis Institute (at 16), made her orchestral debut with the Philharmonia Orchestra and has concertized extensively in the US and Canada as recitalist and chamber musician. She is still residing in New York City and is on the faculty of the Bard College Conservatory of Music.

As I vividly recall, Ms. Sasaki’s distinctive interpretative persona successfully fuses Classical understatement with Romantic freedom. Her elegance has exquisite proportion but always (as I previously wrote) “sprint, gravitas and repose.” Danseuses de Delphes, which can often sound square and blocky, had a tart mobility which the pianist skillfully achieved by playing the answering response phrases a trifle faster and more impetuously than the forgoing ones. Her tempos, most of them on the brisk side, brought to the fore countless other felicities (I especially liked her ongoing, Gieseking-like treatment of THE eponymous interruption in Le Serenade Interrompue; and the way she managed the buildup in La Cathedrale engloutie (in accordance with Debussy’s own piano roll performance. As I remember, the two final Book I Preludes, La danse de Puck and Minstrels, were as fleet and invigorating as ever.

Book II, written a few years after Book I (1909-1910), has many similarities, but there are subtle differences, too. Ms. Sasaki, as one would have expected from such a discriminating musician, seized upon many opportunities. I loved her magnificently robust account of La Puerta de vino, and of course the Hommage a S. Pickwick, Esq. PPMPC had full, requisite Dickensian pomposity. Les Fees danced exquisitely, and Ondine was perceptively more dangerous. The culminating Feux d’artifice, with its final echo of the Marseillaise sizzled brilliantly.

All in all, a wonderful concert from beginning to end.

by Harris Goldsmith for New York Concert Review; New York, NY

Sebastyen Nyirö, piano

CD Review: New York Concert Review

Sebastyen Nyirö, piano

Bach’s Aria with Thirty Variations (Goldberg)

April, 2010

This unusual and, ultimately, compelling new recording of Bach’s transcendental Aria Mit Verschiedenen Verandergungen introduces us yet to another outstanding Hungarian pianist, Sebastyen NyirÖ, who was born in 1979. This may well be the broadest and longest performance of the Goldberg Variations ever. NyirÖ favors taking all the repeats (even those in the Aria da Capo which even the near-fanatical purist Claudio Arrau was even willing to forgo in his early 1940s RCA recording released posthumously on two CDs. Rosalyn Tureck, another famous (or notorious) advocate of repeats and slow tempos, likewise ran over onto two CDs in the Philips Great Pianists of the 20th Century reissue. Simone Dinnerstein, another champion of slow tempos, played all the repeats in her in-concert performance at Weill Recital Hall, but reluctantly condoned omitting a few of them in order to limit her commercial recording (a labor-of-love, later taken over by Telarc) to a single CD. Nyirö’s rendition runs to 85 minutes and fourteen seconds: CD no. 1, with the Aria and Variations 1 through 15 taking 40 minutes and 12 seconds; CD no. 2 beginning with the French Ouverture Variation 16 and ending with the Aria da capo runs 42 minutes; 14 seconds for the work’s conclusion.

Quite apart from repeats and deliberation, Nyirö’s ideas via embellishments are extreme and immediately evident. His account of the Aria is so profusely ornamented that this listener was momentarily at a loss for a few seconds to recognize the basic melody amidst the labyrinth of encrustations. One famous pianist, Wilhelm Kempff, made a recording of the Goldberg for D.G. and unconventionally opted to reduce and strip the tema to its bare skeletal bones (banishing even the minimal decorations that Bach’s original included in his notations). NyirÖ, one might say, is the anti-Kempff!

As the recreation unfolds, Nyirö gradually makes us aware of several important qualities: first, his extreme rigor and clarity of contrapuntal texture. In this respect, his interpretation even exceeds this aspect of Glenn Gould’s 1981 second recording (the first—from 1955—couldn’t be more different, with its remarkably fast tempos and the omission of many, if not all, repeats). Also, in similarity with a well known tradition favored by the conductor Otto Klemperer (of linking some variations together in a single mathematical metronomic pulse), Variation 18, for instance, is admittedly brisker than usual, but the next variation follows at exactly the same half speed tempo. The aforementioned rigor is expressed in severely accented (even martellato) rhythms. NyirÖ is remarkably potent in his handling of the French Ouverture Variation No. 16’s first introductory half, although I was admittedly perplexed by his extremely deliberate treatment of the ensuing second half (which I feel is too static, albeit vital and rhythmically steady).

In describing Glenn Gould’s basic style (not only in Bach), I once wrote about his combining “swooning sensuality with ecclesiastic rigor.” Some of this description might likewise apply to Nyirö’s Goldberg, but the rigor is more evident than the sensuality (though I find some of the pianist’s lavish rubatos “swooning” but never “sensual.”) It will, I admit, take numerous rehearings of this recording to accustom me to certain iconoclastic details, but at the moment, only three or four variations made me take umbrage: Variation 25, which Landowska poetically dubbed as “the Black Pearl”, seems to me more akin to a “Schwartze Maria”: rather tediously fragmented and funereal, and lacking requisite flow and lyricism. Variation 28, with its written- out trills (which may sometimes seem to offer a foretaste of the finale of Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata) is resolutely nailed to the mast. I found Variation 29 aggressively (even assaultively) splashy, and No. 30 could benefit from a touch of requisite levity and humor.

But, ultimately, one is forced to make an attempt to meet Mr.Nyirö on his own terms, pay respect to some technically wonderful pianism, and bow to his deeply motivated, honest experience and his musical thinking. I urge everyone to acknowledge Nyirö’s supreme talent and be tolerant of what may at first seem like off-putting eccentricity.

The recorded sound, incidentally, is vividly realistic.

by Harris Goldsmith for New York Concert Review; New York, NY

Mana Takuno, piano

Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York, NY

April 10, 2010

Mana Takuno’s excellent performance of an early, rarely heard 1901 work by George Enescu, his Suite No.2 in D Major, Op. 10, delighted me at a May 8, 2008 concert—(see review in Volume 15, No.3 of this journal) , and it made me want to hear more of her playing. I wrote that her exciting interpretation, with its “drive, virtuosity, textual and coloristic diversity”, stole the show from three other young pianists who shared the same concert with her. Ms. Takuno and her program of Poulenc, Thomas Oboe Lee, Beethoven and Schumann afforded me a more comprehensive “fix” on her achievement and pianistic capabilities.

Ms. Takuno commenced with Theme Varie, which I believe was Francis Poulenc’s last work for solo piano. From the outset, the pianist captivated me with a warm, firm, beautifully balanced singing tone, and was alive to every intriguing turn of Poulenc’s whimsy. The second item was Thomas Oboe Lee’s 2009 Takuno Toccata, which was labeled a world premiere (it had been previewed in Boston a few weeks earlier on March 30th.) The work is skillfully written, and Ms. Takuno, the dedicatee, obviously found the Toccata tailor-made for her abilities and musical persona.

Alas, it pains me to relate that Ms. Takuno’s recital, after its auspicious beginning, turned out to be a surprisingly Jekyll and Hyde affair: Beethoven’s Sonata No. 28 in A, Op. 101 began wanly, and then promptly came with memory slips from which she never really recovered. The second movement March was too fast (for her comfort) and rhythmically and technically out of control. The poignant Largo-molto cantabile lacked concentration and intensity, and the Presto Finale was slipshod and lumpy. I will concede that this late-Beethoven Sonata is a tough nut for any young artist to crack, but I was a bit shocked that a player who I had believed to be as experienced and accomplished as Ms. Takuno would have been so technically over-extended and out of her element.

I was even more saddened by her inadequate performance of Schumann’s sublime Davidsbundler Tanze, Op. 6, a work which I had hoped would prove entirely congenial for an artist with an inclination to heartfelt Romanticism. Her version was to be sure “serious”, but it was also “boring”, as her tempos were prevailingly slow and heavy. Admittedly, I much favor Schumann’s earlier first version of the composition. The revised version, which Ms. Takuno validly preferred, burdens the attractive impetuosity and asymmetry with many portentous repeats, and furthermore expunges a few delectable details such as the held over note on the very first phrase and the delicious little pat on the backside at the end of No. 9. But the real problem with Ms. Takuno’s rendition was its technically labored pianistic deficiency (No. 13 was not so much Wild und lustig as muddled and desperate.)The virtuosity I had admired deserted her.

An encore, the Promenade penultimate movement from Schumann’s Carnaval, Op. 9 gave us more of the same, but, fortunately, a second encore—which I am told was part of Thomas Oboe Lee’s 20-9 Fireflies Book III, “Like a Music Box”—let us glimpse anew at the tonal beauty and refinement that had delighted me in Ms. Takuno’s playing in the early stages of her program.

My conclusion is that she is certainly gifted but also a “work in progress.”

by Harris Goldsmith for New York Concert Review; New York, NY

Mendelssohn 200th Anniversary Gala

Rutgers University

May 26, 2009

Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall

To honor the bicentenary of Felix Mendelssohn’s birth, the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University’s Boyd Foundation (under the direction of piano Professor Min Kwon) mounted an extravaganza presenting practically all of the composer’s Songs Without Words as played by the piano department’s artists—most of them graduate students there; a few undergraduates; and for a final flourish, the Scherzo from A Midsummer Night’s Dream Music in a four hand piano version (source unspecified; not the ubiquitous Rachmaninoff solo arrangement) with two faculty members, Min Kwon and Daniel Epstein doing the honors.

A similar concert fielded by Rutgers “et al” was built around the Grieg Lyric Pieces in tribute to the hundredth anniversary of the Norwegian Minor Master’s death on December 14, 2007. That event at Steinway Hall was favorably reviewed by Edith Eisler in Volume 15 No.2 of this journal. Assessing diverse performances of short pieces can be a temptation for a critic to make comparisons and pass subjective value judgments (and my compliments to my colleague Ms. Eisler for elegantly avoiding potential but unwarranted opinion!). With so many pianist involved there are of course variations in interpretations, tone, temperamental style and technique to be conjured with; but Mendelssohn ’s Songs Without Words, diverse as they are, do not offer amazing leeway that (say) Chopin’s Mazurkas can potentially bring to the fore. Mendelssohn’s idiom, in keeping with Grieg, calls for a similar German Romanticism whereas Chopin is particularly prone to many “specialists” who will never agree about ways to apply or shape a rubato and the result will often bombard the listener with “authentic” interpreters who are—well—Poles apart!

The protagonists offered an intriguing array of artists harking from Australia, Tbilisi, South Korea, Costa Rica, Japan, Taiwan, Poland and Brazil. And before coming to Rutgers, many of the players graduated from Mannes College, the Manhattan School of Music, Juilliard, Boston University and Toronto (New England Conservatory, University of Toronto) in America.

One particularly gratifying aspect of this marathon was the wonderful; sense of camaraderie. Ms. Eisler comment about the aforementioned Grieg concert deserves to be quoted appreciatively:

“In today’s competitive musical world, the concert was remarkable for its freedom from egotism and rivalry; in a true spirit of homage to the composer, the performers and never called attention to themselves of to their technical and musical gifts, but focused entirely on the music.”

In retrospective, this was a heartwarming and satisfying evening of music. Bravo to everyone connected with it!

by Harris Goldsmith for New York Concert Review; New York, NY

Xiayin Wang, Piano

Alice Tully Hall, New York, NY

May 18, 2009

Dear Reader: It gives me great pleasure to report that Xiayin Wang’s magnificent recital on May 18^th was a milestone; a true rite of passage! As they say, nothing succeeds like success and before Ms. Wang even played a note, a large upbeat audience roared its approval as she took her place on stage. The ensuing opening chords of Haydn’s great last Sonata in E flat, Hob. XV1/52 (actually 62), played Maestoso, at once served notice that Ms. Wang’s appealingly reticent musical persona familiar to this writer from her several previous recitals and her compact disc (Marquis 81369) had metamorphosized into a bigger, bolder, confident and more interesting artiste. Rarely have I heard such an outstanding transformation (just for comparison, try Ms. Wang’s small scaled, shapeless performance of Mozart’s K. 330 Sonata on the cited recording). The Haydn was heroically revealed; the subito fortissimos at the ends of the first movement exposition and recapitulation had just the startling impact Haydn specified; the Adagio had remarkable gravitas and the movement’s imperious forte interjections and audacious juxtapositions of unexpected key relationships all enhanced the work’s harmonic tensions. The Finale too burst forth with a blistering Presto. Ms. Wang, you might say, made the Haydn sound like early Beethoven, and I think she was stylistically right on the money.

Chopin’s Ballade No. 2 in F Major, Op. 38 (some musicians like Brahms and Murray Perahia insist that the composition ends and should be identified as being “in A minor”) began liltingly, its opening melody lovingly shaped with subtle, unobtrusive rubato. The fierce ensuing second part came as an avalanche and the forward-thrusting phrasing slashed forward with unfailing direction and purpose. The potentially terrifying coda was rendered with note perfect confidence and accuracy: A great performance.

There were two World Premieres on Ms. Wang’s program. Richard Danielpour’s Preludes Book II, “The Enchanted Garden”, proved accessible and appealing. The first piece, “Persepolis” was rather suggestive of Poulenc. The second, “Surrounded by Idiots” scampered about engagingly; the Third was an “Elegy”; the Fourth “Lean Kat Stride” a jazzy free for all. And inevitably, for a suite called “The Enchanted Garden” Mr. Danilepour turned his sights to Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite. The pleasingly derivative music was beautifully written for the piano and evidently tailor-made for its dedicatee who played it to the hilt. The other World Premiere, Sean Hickey’s Cursive was a bit harder for this reviewer to absorb in one hearing, but it, too, was demandingly and effectively written for the piano (Hickey, according to his bio was trained as a jazz guitarist). His piece was also handsomely played by Ms. Wang.

Everyone these days seems to be fielding Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit and Ms. Wang’s account of Scarbo was unusually robust and large scaled (with all its fearsome repeated notes and virtuoso obstacles magnificently under control.

Scriabin’s 1903 Valse, Op. 38 was elegantly bittersweet. (Ms. Wang has always shown special affinity for the short-lived Russian composer’s slightly demented music and, as this review is written, a new all-Scriabin Naxos recording from Ms. Wang is imminently awaiting release.)

The formal portion of the concert ended with one of the fastest, fleetest accounts of Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1 with all its swashbuckling glissandos (which we heard earlier in the Danielpour), and leaps brilliantly nailed.

For an encore, the pianist beguiled us with one of those Chinese Picture Postcards, “The Autumn Mood over the Calm Lake” from the Dvorak dynasty (you might say that pentatonic scales were as typical of the Czech composer’s music as any quintessential Chinese or Japanese stereotype).

by Harris Goldsmith for New York Concert Review; New York, NY