Heegan Lee, piano
Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York, NY
April 24, 2018
Normally, when I see the words “prodigious musical savant” I get a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. So often, things do not turn out well for prodigies. This unease was largely put to rest by Heegan Lee after the first few notes of the Andante from the Cello Sonata in G minor, Op. 19 (transcribed by Arcadi Volodos), the first Rachmaninoff transcription on his recital: liquid phrasing, sensitive rubato, a beautiful piano sound at all times, and technique to burn. Mr. Lee was a different kind of prodigy: At age fourteen, he (purportedly) “learned the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto [I assume the first] by ear after hearing it but once on a DVD.” He then continued to learn other works by the Romantics in much the same way. He went on to earn Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Manhattan School of Music.
For an official debut recital, there was not enough variety for this reviewer to fairly assess the quality and range of this artist, though he obviously has many virtues in place already. Min Kwon, who introduced Mr. Lee, said we’d hear his love for the piano, and we did. He took the stage with a surprisingly sober demeanor for such a display-oriented player.
I must begin with the second half of the recital, which was a handful of “New Age” (Mr. Lee’s words, not mine) piano music, as arranged by Mr. Lee, by Yiruma (the stage name of Korean composer and pianist Lee Ru-ma), Kevin Kern, and Mr. Lee himself. In his oral remark before playing, Mr. Lee said he chose them to avoid what he called the “monotony” of the typical recital. I’m sorry he feels that way, since there are tens of thousands of varied piano works, very few of which he seemed compelled to perform on his debut. Something tells me he didn’t learn Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier by ear after one hearing. Every one of his arrangements sounds exactly the same, with the same arpeggiation, climax, and left hand cross-over high note. Yiruma’s River Flows In You, and Kiss the Rain are so much prettier and more eloquent in his (Yiruma’s) own solo piano version “without cosmetics,” so to speak. I’m sorry to be so rough, but maybe one piece would have sufficed to show Mr. Lee’s talent in this direction.
The first half of the recital contained his best playing, despite its lopsided structure. He played two Rachmaninoff transcriptions (one by Volodos, already mentioned, and the other, Vocalise, by Earl Wild) and two short original works. All were given the red-carpet treatment, and his affection for beautiful piano sound was in abundant evidence. I have heard cleaner performances of Rachmaninoff’s Moment musical (Op. 16, No. 4) and Prelude (Op. 32, No. 10), but his emotional involvement and technical fearlessness drew the listener in. The Prelude was mannered, but the Moment was exciting in an impetuous way. The best performance of the evening was his Vocalise, in which he “out-Wilded” Wild.
The Chopin group did not stray far from unabashed warhorses: the Fantaisie-Impromptu, the Revolutionary Etude, and finally a deep work that demands maturity, the F minor Ballade. All contained successful fluidity of fingerwork, but strangely, they began to sound like transcriptions too. I found myself wondering why this bothered me so much. After all, isn’t everything we perform a transcription? We take in the “dots” the composer gives us and process them through our hearts and intellects, our physical gifts, and our nervous systems, and then deliver our “transcription” of the piece. Mr. Lee’s pianistic point-of-view doesn’t seem to change much with the change of piece.
The Fantaisie-Impromptu’s outer sections were daringly too fast for clarity, but they worked. Only in the famous I’m Always Chasing Rainbows melody of the middle section did Mr. Lee seem reluctant to truly vary the color of the many repeats, which I thought he’d be doing lavishly, based on the Rachmaninoff. The Etude was, again, too fast for rhythmic clarity, but impressive if such things impress one. He also changed the concluding run to a vulgar interlocking octave showpiece that, strangely, is easier than Chopin’s original unison run for both hands. In the F minor Ballade, there was a rather slapdash approach side-by-side with great emotional involvement, some exciting rubati, even some intimacy. He displayed very individual ideas (this is good, no “cookie-cutter”) and a big temperament, but the piece could have used more elegance.
None of this fazed the large, enthusiastic crowd, and he gave as an encore an elegantly done Tchaikovsky/Volodos Lullaby, Op. 16. No baby is going to be lulled to sleep during that lullaby!
A debut recital ought to present a calling-card to the musical community, one that shows as many facets of the artist as possible. I know there is “more” within Mr. Lee, and I hope he persists, finds it, and then shares it with us.
