Date: February 23, 2003
Review: Young Artists Concert

(Editor's Note: Because of a scheduling conflict, I asked David Beech to review the following concert. Mr. Beech is a retired computer scientist who lives in Monterey. He is a clarinetist and occasional pianist. His mother was a pianist who brought him up to revere the playing of Solomon. Other great pianists that he has heard and admired over the years include Cortot, Myra Hess, Arrau, Katchen, Curzon, Brendel, Lupu, Ashkenazy, Cherkassky, and Perahia.)

The Steinway Society of the Bay Area presented an exciting 2003 Young Artists Concert on Sunday evening, February 23, at Le Petit Trianon, San Jose. All four of the pianists were winners of Bay Area piano competitions - two for playing Beethoven, and two for playing Russian music - and this was somewhat reflected in their choice of repertoire for this program. All of the works were played faultlessly from memory and with impeccable technique, and yet each of the performers exhibited a different personality via the same instrument, a fine Steinway B that is more than capable of filling the recital-sized auditorium.

Doreen Lee is from the Bay Area, and is currently a music major at UCLA. Her elegant arm and hand movements flowed into her interpretation of one of the lesser-known Chopin Impromptus, the F sharp major, Op. 36, and she followed this with Debussy's Mouvements from Book I of Images, which had good momentum although lacking the last ounce of clarity. This was accomplished playing, but it hardly prepared the audience for Lee's outstanding account of Prokofiev's Third Sonata, Op.28, in which she balanced the mechanical and the expressive, the classical and the barbaric elements in Prokofiev's style, achieving good sonority without assailing the listeners unduly. The work was brought to a rousing and very satisfying climax.

The other artist in the first half of the program was Luis Magalhaes who was born in Portugal in 1976, and has just completed a doctorate in Performance at the University of Cape Town. He began with Ravel's Miroirs, and immediately revealed a touch that was very delicate, subtle and precise. Noctuelles was clear and witty, with carefully graduated dynamics, and Oiseaux tristes achieved a daring stillness in its pianissimos. By contrast, the vivid rhythms and glissandi of Alborada del gracioso effectively reflected Ravel's lifelong fascination with Spain (rooted in his upbringing on the Spanish border south of Biarritz), and brought to a close a mature and meticulous performance of Miroirs. The other work chosen by Magalhaes was the barnstorming Rachmaninov/Kreisler Liebesfreud, an unabashed parody of the sentimental extremes of romanticism, with sly distortions and all manner of histrionic excesses. Although this pianist's tone became clangorous at times, he was equal to all of the technical demands, and the performance was overall highly enjoyable. A slight lack of a graceful lilt in the more relaxed passages suggested that this thoughtful artist is not yet quite at home in this extroverted work.

Beth Nam, aged nineteen, hails from Torrance, California, and is currently a student at the Julliard School. In choosing to play Beethoven’s A major Sonata, Op. 2, No. 2, she offered a welcome counterweight to the romantic and modern works offered by all the other artists. While the virtuosic demands of Beethoven may not be so great, the purely musical qualities called for are often greater, so that this was quite an ambitious undertaking. Nam immediately impressed by the fluidity of her playing — like Lee, she uses graceful body movements as a means to this end. Even in this early work, Beethoven was breaking new ground, and in the opening Allegro vivace one would have liked to hear a slightly more spontaneous and incisive approach. All the ideas were clearly presented, but polished as if in the comfortable world of Mendelssohn. The Largo appassionato had poise, and the Scherzo rippled along happily. The Rondo: grazioso was ideally suited to Nam's present style, and the various rising A major arpeggios and scales that introduce the rondo theme each time it returns (eventually spanning three octaves and a fifth) were delightfully done, before the work came to its quiet, modest close.

Finally, an all-Russian selection was presented by Darrett Zusko, a Canadian who is only eighteen and currently studies at the Julliard School. In the first of Scriabin's 4 Preludes, Op. 37, he captured the restrained mood, and then launched into the stormy, heavy No. 2. The third prelude had a fine cantabile melody over a murmuring accompaniment, and the fourth was short and heroic - giving us a taste of what was to come. The group of five preludes chosen from Rachmaninov's Op. 32 was especially intriguing for anyone who had heard three of them played recently in San Francisco by the established Russian virtuoso Arcadi Volodos. Remarkably, it turned out that Zusko's playing could stand comparison, lacking only the magical pianissimo that Volodos possesses – and even here, some allowance has to be made for the greater ease of creating a distant pianissimo in Davies Symphony Hall than in Le Petit Trianon. The first prelude, in C major, had full tone, clean pedaling, and excellent finger work. The fifth, in G major, was performed exquisitely with its double trills decorating the notes of the ethereal melody (although Volodos played the left hand accompaniment more softly). No. 8, Vivo in A minor, kept its running sixteenths going beautifully to the apparent throwaway ending capped by a final forte chord and flourish of the sixteenth note figure. The B minor prelude (No. 10) was splendidly played, its quiet and sad outer sections enclosing a fortissimo center with gorgeous sonority of repeated chords (reminiscent of the Liszt Sonata). The final prelude in the group, No. 3 in E major, was another success, its martial E major zipping along until it subsides into peace on two widely-spaced piano chords. Still in store was Balakirev's Islamey, and this was the finest playing of the evening. Not only was there mastery of the hugely difficult keyboard part, with effects on an orchestral scale, but there was a conviction and control to the playing that augur well for Zusko's future career. The musical ideas came across as directly as if a single melodic line were being shaped, without any distortion or hesitation due to technical difficulties in the pyrotechnics - all in all, a totally musical experience. Bravo!

Of course, in the format of this concert, there was not room for encores, but at the end, all four performers came to take a final bow and receive their well-deserved bouquets, to a standing ovation.