American Liszt Society Presents Yi Zhong and Joseph Kingma in Review
Yi Zhong and Joseph Kingma, pianists
Yamaha Artist Services, Inc. (YASI) Piano Salon, New York, NY
Wednesday, January 8, 2020
Two pianists shared a concert this week at the Yamaha Artists Services, Inc (YASI) piano salon on Fifth Avenue: Joseph Kingma, winner of the 2017 Liszt International Piano Competition in Ohio, and Yi Zhong, a prize winner of the 2016 Los Angeles Liszt International Piano Competition. The concert was presented under the auspices of the American Liszt Society (ALS), and pianist Gila Goldstein, president of its New York/New Jersey Chapter since she founded it 1992, spoke words of introduction. She prepared the sizeable crowd for an evening of virtuosity, not exclusively by Liszt but also Rachmaninoff and composers who followed Liszt.
Yi Zhong played first, starting with two movements of Liszt’s transcription of the Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique. We heard Reveries – Passions and Un Bal. Un Bal is the better known of the two movements, and it was brilliant in Mr. Zhong’s hands, projecting charm and sweep in its lilting waltz and mounting to a bravura ending with rapid octaves, huge leaps, hand-crossings – “the works.” Mr. Zhong is a fine champion for this transcription movement, which is still relatively rarely played.
Still rarer are live piano performances of the Symphonie’s longer first movement, Reveries-Passions, and perhaps with good reason. Berlioz, as one of history’s great masters of orchestration poured much of his inspiration into the orchestral colors, and many of these are hard to capture via solo piano, not to mention at high speed while addressing balance and detail. It is rather telling that, when pianist Christopher O’Riley performed the entire fifty-minute Symphonie in New York in 2018, it was in collaboration with Basil Twist’s aquatic puppetry, ballet, lights, and tinsel. Without ample color of some sort, the high drama can descend into hokum and the piano writing into dreck. Mr. Zhong thankfully avoided that fate, but the loudness of the hall piano still dominated the experience. Mr. Zhong certainly has the pianism to tackle just about anything, but this special niche of the repertoire will call for that “je ne sais quoi.”
A bit of a sonic reprieve came with the sublime Quejas o la Maja y el Ruiseñor (The Maiden and the Nightingale) from Goyescas of Enrique Granados. Mr. Zhong showed a genuine warmth of feeling here, which grew still more apparent in the next work, the Intermezzo No. 1 of Mexican composer Manuel Ponce (1882-1948). Ponce remains best known for guitar works, so it was refreshing to hear part of his piano output.
Mr. Zhong concluded his programmed portion with Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 15 (Rakoczy March) in Vladimir Horowitz’s version, played with tremendous technical skill and a Horowitzian gleam. Mr. Zhong is a pianist of impressive stamina, fierce concentration, and unquestionable technical command, and these bode well for his busy performing life. He returned for an encore, a jazzy piano arrangement by Alexis Weissenberg of the charming En Avril À Paris (April in Paris) of Charles Trenet (not to be confused with Vernon Duke’s April in Paris). These Weissenberg arrangements have also been performed by Marc-André Hamelin but have only recently (late 2018-2019) been made available in a Muse Press publication (edited by Mr. Hamelin), so Mr. Zhong is surely close to the forefront of some fresh repertoire.
The second pianist of the evening was Joseph Kingma. This reviewer worried a bit that the aural saturation point had already been reached in the first half, so the prospect of hearing Liszt’s Sonetto 104 del Petrarca from Années de Pèlerinages (V. II, Italy) and the complete Thirteen Preludes Op. 32 of Rachmaninoff was daunting; any misgivings, though, were short-lived.
Mr. Kingma coaxed the listener into the music’s poetry from the very first notes of his Liszt, showing the command of a master and a composer’s insight. Though his technique emerged through the program as one which is capable of anything, it was always used in the service of the music itself.
Mr. Kingma’s Rachmaninoff Preludes were astonishingly good, each in a different way. To say that the Op. 32 set is hard to pull off in live performance is an understatement. The Preludes as a group challenge every facet of pianism and musicality (including stamina), but, beyond that, they require that an artist draw out the uniqueness of each one, lest they all become a blur for an average audience after forty minutes. It was clear that Mr. Kingma knew each piece from inside the music but could also step outside each one enough to “translate” it in a sense to his audience – a rare gift.
From the stormy virtuosity of No. 1 to the dark brooding in No. 2 with its restless undercurrent and the brisk energy of No. 3’s wintry troika ride, Mr. Kingma captured the opening three wonderfully. The elusive, shifting moods in No. 4 are unwieldy for many but were projected quite persuasively, and an ethereal transparency graced the Prelude No. 5 in G major (Moderato). If one occasionally wondered whether the pedal might be a bit sluggish (as also possibly in Sonnet 104 early on), that reservation was fleeting, and the Prelude No. 6 lived up to its Allegro appassionato designation, roiling with rapid-fire finger-work and power.
These pieces travel to interesting territory tonally (one was reminded of Shostakovich and Prokofiev in moments of the No. 7 in F major, Moderato), and just when one felt one knew every inch of Rachmaninoff’s work, Mr. Kingma rekindled the desire to relearn them all more deeply. One hopes he will record the entire set (if he hasn’t already). He has clearly delved into each one on all levels, from the broader swaths to the finer lines, colored inflections, and nuances.
The set progressed seamlessly to its close, from the fleet-fingered lightness of No. 8 to the masterful pacing of No. 9, the palpable tragedy of No. 10 in B minor, and the mercurial shifts in No. 11. Only the briefest glitch arose in No. 12 – remarkable amid such a large undertaking – and the final ponderous No. 13 (Grave) held the audience spellbound. On that subject, lest one think it was an audience of all cognoscenti, two neighboring attendees who had been audibly trying to distinguish Berlioz from Granados sat utterly transfixed and silent – an affirmation of the power of music and of Mr. Kingma’s performance.
The only distractions by the end were the bongo-like noises of the hall’s radiator, which, in view of all the acoustical technology used in this space, seemed rather ironic. Both artists deserved better, so one hopes that this problem can be resolved. Apart from such matters, congratulations are in order to all involved.
