Rondo FORMA Competition First Place Winners’ Recital
Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall
The non-profit Rondo organization is now in its fifth year, and has recently opened its competition to conservatory-age students. The four winners, all pianists, were presented in their award recital on Thursday. This concert was a mammoth program of about a “half” recital from each of the four pianists, the repertoire, with one exception, was standard.
Grace Han opened the evening with a lovely account of Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in E-flat minor/D sharp minor, BWV 853 (WTC I), with the fugue especially notable for its gentle movement and contrapuntal clarity. She then followed with the baroque viewed through the eyes of the romantic composer Brahms: his Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24. She performed it in a very tightly organized way, musical certainly, but often lacking in poetry, and at times way too muscular, brusque, and noisy. The first turn to B-flat minor in variation five should be arresting and heartbreaking; instead it was loud. However, the very next one, also in the minor, a canon at the octave was beautifully ghostly.
Ziang Xu followed, with another very poetic Bach Prelude and Fugue in B-flat minor, BWV 867 (WTC I), sensitive to every harmonic change and linear movement. He then played a riotous etude by Nikolai Kapustin (b. 1937) that was a jazzy staccato study, ferociously difficult, which Xu tossed off with great flair. Not quite as successful, however, was the main “dish” of his mini-recital: Chopin’s set of 12 Etudes, Op. 10. As Alfred Cortot always said, (the Chopin etudes are) “as inaccessible to the technician without poetry as they are to the poet without technique.” Mr. Xu occupies something of a middle-ground in my opinion. He certainly gave astonishing displays of dexterity, usually with tempi that were inhumanly rapid. But I questioned the true musical value of some of the achievement, for many, many opportunities for sensitivity were left in the dust. For me, the three that verged on “perfection” were Nos. 5, 9, and 11: in those he responded to every need. The “Black Key” etude was fleet but playful; the cruel stretches of the left hand in the F Minor were no obstacle to his rendering the right hand poetically; and the wide arpeggios in the E-Flat Major had a perfectly voiced melody floating on top. Mr. Xu needs to reconsider the material in what I call the “non-etude” hand (usually the left hand), so that it isn’t buried amid the difficult figurations. This will automatically increase his musical depth, of which he already possesses a great deal.
After intermission came the best playing of the night with the final two pianists. Sun Young Lee chose just one work, but an immense one, Schumann’s three-movement Fantasy in C Major, Op. 17. She brought out the impetuous, playful, “Florestan” qualities in the first movement beautifully. Her second-movement march had the requisite mercurial mood shifts and poetry in the middle section. Her bravura risk-taking was worth the (very few) missed notes in its treacherous coda. Finally, she brought deep color changes and consideration to the quiet concluding movement, each harmonic shift contained magic. She was the first pianist of the night to seem like she was actively listening, not only to herself, but to the composer and the music, making something “live” before our ears.
The concert concluded with what was, for me, the finest playing. Mintra Rungruengsorakam (I hope I never have to pronounce that in public) gave an absolutely radiant account of a rarely-played Haydn Piano Sonata in A-flat major, Hob. XVI:46. She was divinely in tune with the style, the instrument, and herself. I never wanted it to end, especially her breathtaking account of the Adagio. She then followed with two of the four movements of Prokofiev’s Second Piano Sonata (D minor, Op. 14): the way she played the first two notes of the first movement, a deceptively simple octave descent, signaled to me that she was going to deliver a beautiful rendition, and she did. No opportunity for lyrical playing was missed, which is so difficult in Prokofiev. Her no-nonsense, motoric Scherzo was absolutely appropriate. She concluded with Chopin’s brilliant Waltz in F major, Op. 34, No. 3, which was tossed off with humor, flirtatiousness, and every note considered. Beautiful work!
I heartily congratulate the achievements of all the Rondo winners, and I pray that they may always play to FULL houses.
