Yixiang Hou “Carnival” CD in Review
Yixiang Hou, pianist
Joel Crawford, Recording, mixing, and mastering engineer
KNS Classical label: KNS A/139
The KNS Classical recording label (www.knsclassical.com) has just this spring released an album entitled Carnival featuring excellent performances by pianist Yixiang Hou in unusual selections from the late Renaissance to the twentieth century. Recorded December 18, 2022 on a Steinway at Robert J. Werner Recital Hall (University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, CCM), it includes composers as disparate as Orlando Gibbons, Robert Schumann, Charles-Valentin Alkan, Alexander Scriabin, and Arnold Schoenberg. Not too surprisingly this album includes Schumann’s epic Op. 9, Carnaval, but equally carnivalesque is Alkan’s Le Festin d’Ésope (The Feast of Aesop), Op. 39, No 12 (1857), an exciting and still relatively overlooked work. Mr. Hou, a winner of quite a few prizes, revels in this diverse musical menu, proving himself to be a gifted and adventurous young artist.
One is a bit puzzled by the inclusion in a “Carnival” collection of several much more somber selections – the Schoenberg Op. 11, Scriabin’s “Black Mass” Sonata No. 9, and especially the Gibbons Pavan in G minor which opens (the processional display aspect notwithstanding); perhaps these are to serve as foils for the Schumann and Alkan centerpieces, but if the title “Carnival” is simply to suggest great variety, these works do add to that.
Mr. Hou opens the album with solemnity, imbuing the Gibbons Pavan in G minor with a free, quasi-improvisatory expressiveness that suits it well. It is a joy to hear. Though performance practice specialists tend to prefer early instruments for such a piece, a modern piano works beautifully in its own ways (as Glenn Gould and others have agreed). Mr. Hou is a persuasive advocate here, exploiting the piano’s colors to project its mercurial changes and shaping its florid lines well.
Alkan’s Le Festin d’Ésope (the twelfth etude of Alkan’s Op. 39 from 1857) follows in complete contrast, starting with an impish theme in E minor followed by twenty-five virtuosic variations. Honoring Aesop with various animal evocations, this etude an orgy of pianistic display, chordal bombast, wild hand-crossing, rapid octaves, ridiculously fast sixty-fourth notes in one hand with simultaneous leaps in the other, and just enough rhythmic mischief and abbajante (“barking”) dissonance to keep a virtuoso from taking himself (or anything) too seriously. Mr. Hou handles the pyrotechnics easily, with a technique that allows him to unleash its maniacal outbursts with zest. Still a bit more measured than my “go-to” recording of this by Marc-André Hamelin (who was noted for pioneering this and other pieces by Alkan), Mr. Hou maintains most of the overall tautness of tempo as requested by the composer (avoiding what pianists jokingly call the “emergency maestoso” even in the direst diabolical difficulties), but he takes extra time where the music invites breathing. He is always controlled, with careful metric placement. He also thankfully manages the bravura passages without stretches of “banging” or stridency.
The relative spareness of Schoenberg’s Drei Klavierstücke, Op. 11 (1909) feels just right after Alkan’s circus of excess, though the three pieces are challenging to pianist and listener alike. Mr. Hou gives them thoughtful interpretations, carrying the listener through their almost stream-of-consciousness journey. The slow second piece benefits from a particularly expressive and involved performance here, and the stormy third is full of passion.
Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No. 9, Op. 68 (“Black Mass”) is one of the more difficult of Scriabin’s piano sonatas to hold together, but Mr. Hou has the insight and technique to do just that. Going back to the album title “Carnival” (if this work were meant to relate to that title at all), this would surely be the carnival’s Tower of Terror or some such attraction. This pianist’s rendition comes closer than most in capturing its eerie otherworldliness and ineffable terror.
Placement is key in music, and almost anything following the “Black Mass” Sonata sounds joyous; Robert Schumann’s Carnaval thus brings an especially welcome spirit of triumph to close this album. Mr. Hou gives it all it requires in a fairly mainstream, unsurprising but thoroughly satisfying performance. One can only imagine that his various live performances of it in competitions must have wowed his juries with his technical strengths and reliable musicality.
Along with being a frequent prizewinner in competitions, Mr. Hou continues his studies as a doctoral candidate at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) under the tutelage of Ran Dank (whom this reviewer reviewed as a musician of “immense talent” in 2008 as the winner of the Hilton Head International Competition). What a fruitful pairing of two adventurous musicians! In addition, Mr. Hou has studied at the Shanghai Conservatory with pianists Qi Zhang, Weiling Chen, Dachun You, and Ting Zhou, in Boston with Wha Kyung Byun at the New England Conservatory, and at the Aspen Music Festival with Arie Vardi.
To reach such a high level while still a student bodes well for Mr. Hou’s future, and he is certainly an artist to watch as he continues to explore. Meanwhile, one can find his album at most online music stores. It would be hard, if not impossible, to find this particular array of works played as well by a single artist.
