JingCi Liu “Portrait of Beauty” Recording in Review
JingCi Lu, piano
KNS Classical- available to stream on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, YouTube
This past Valentine’s Day, pianist JingCi Liu gave us a lovely musical valentine, in the form of an album dedicated to women composers. Perhaps someday we can stop saying women before the word composer, but I understand how when one gender has been dominant and exclusionary, some redress is called for. The title of the album is Portrait of Beauty, one of those titles that doesn’t say much, but here is rescued by the quality of the playing.
For me, the real discovery is the first work, the first (of three) keyboard sonatas (E major) by Marianna von Martinez, a classical period composer, and that rarity—a woman allowed to pursue education and artistic goals—to a point. Imagine having Haydn, Metastasio, Porpora as housemates and teachers, and Mozart as a drop-in guest in Vienna. I believe this may be the first recording of one of her sonatas. Ms. Liu plays it with crisp, stylish articulation in the two quick movements, and lovely lyricism in the slow movement, where the music is very reminiscent of Haydn.
The five middle composers are: one concert pianist, wife of a famous composer (Clara Schumann), one neglected French “salon” composer (Cécile Chaminade), one recognized Amereican composer (Amy Beach), and two French sisters, one Prix de Rome winner who died too young (Lili Boulanger) and the other who devoted her life to the memory of her sister and to generations of pedagogy (Nadia Boulanger).
Clara Schumann’s Soirées musicales (1836) are her own attempt to do what she was constantly exhorting her husband to do: create recital pieces that are not too demanding (read: alienating) for the audience. The Beidermeyer aesthetic of coziness is present in the diminutive but precisely characterized pieces, all but the first sharing genre names closely identified with Chopin. Here, Ms. Liu’s touch becomes meltingly romantic. The Notturno’s main theme was “borrowed” by Robert Schumann, the two of them often communicated with each other prior to their “forbidden” marriage via musical themes and quotations. Ms. Liu makes all of Clara’s notational eccentricities/innovations sound absolutely natural. You would never mistake a mazurka, ballade, or polonaise by Clara Schumann for one by Chopin, but Ms. Liu makes as persuasive a case for them as I can imagine. The second mazurka in the set (piece no. 5) was directly quoted by Robert Schumann as the beginning theme of his Davidsbündlertänze, also his Op. 6. The whole is played with an appropriate intimacy and restraint.
Although Chaminade died in 1944, most of her music sounds like it was composed one hundred years prior; alas, such is the fate of retro-inspired composers, though I for one, enjoy her considerable output immensely. The Toccata, Op. 39, a delightful study in lightness and speed, ought to be on more high-school music competition requirement lists. Pierrette, Air de Ballet, Op. 41, is a perky, eminently choreographable trifle. I do wish Ms. Liu had chosen one of Chaminade’s lovely slower, lyrical moments, such as Automne, for greater contrast and balance.
Amy Beach also died in 1944, and similar to Chaminade, she has that backward-looking/sounding romantic-era style, though she did manage to find some quite original sonorities and tonal experimentation. A successful pianist, she managed to wrestle her way to recognition as a composer with larger-scale art music such as symphonies and masses, in the male-dominated classical world, while also having to fight her mother and husband for control of her own career. Dreaming, the third of the four Sketches, Op. 15, is preceded by an epigram from Victor Hugo: “You speak to me from the depth of a dream…” Ms. Liu delivers it in truly dreamy style; she has an ability to hold on to long sustained notes and create a true legato.
Nadia Boulanger was better known as a creator of other composers than as a composer herself. Her professorship at the American Conservatoire in Fontainbleau (known as the “Boulangerie”) attracted hundreds of aspiring students, many from the US. She had a unique ability to allow their individual voices to thrive, even if they weren’t aligned with her typically Fauré/Stravinsky esthetic (now there’s a contrast!). Vers la vie nouvelle (Toward the new life) is a completely un-ironic statement that might have been made by any of the women represented on this album; in this case written one year before the death of her beloved sister, 1917 (see below), a blessing at times dark and sinister and an envoi to the beyond.
Lili Boulanger was the first female winner of the Prix de Rome in its (then) 110-year history. Sadly, the frail, chronically ill young woman was to succumb to intestinal tuberculosis at age twenty-four, leaving behind a short body of work that undoubtedly would have grown and matured. The three pieces for piano, two concerning gardens, D’un vieux jardin and D’un jardin clair, and the Cortège (originally for violin and piano) all date from 1914. They demonstrate some harmonic exploration, but also hover somewhere between Schumann and Scriabin at times.
Caroline Shaw is the only living composer on the album, and a multi-prize winning one at that (Pulitzer, Grammy). Gustave Le Gray was premiered in 2012. Le Gray (1820-1884) was a French painter and an innovative photographer in the earliest days of that medium, exercising great influence on those who came after. If Caroline Shaw “says” the piece is about Le Gray, we must surely take her at her word. But which aspect of his life is contained therein? His student years, innovations, success, financial ruin, abandonment of family, adventures in the middle-East, death in Cairo? No matter, this, the longest work on the album, has the texture of most of the other works, nocturnal, sustained, playing to Liu’s strengths. There is a direct quote of the entire Mazurka, Op. 17, No. 4, by Chopin, right in the middle of the work—Le Gray was 29 when the composer died, but the famous daguerreotype of the sick composer was not by Le Gray, rather Louis-Auguste Bisson. This extended quote absolves Shaw of the need to compose a large section of her own piece, however, the payoff comes when she begins improvising with the actual ending of the Mazurka, signaling some sort of emotional shift.
The recorded sound is beautiful and the dynamic palette is such that an intimate mood is created and featured. This isn’t a “barnstorming” album, so if you’re looking for technical fireworks, look elsewhere. If however you, as do I, appreciate the sort of quiet virtuosity that involves control and sustained intimacy, this would be perfect for you.
