Date: March 13, 2005
see also: Bio | Concert

The 2005 Young Artists Concert of the Steinway Society of the Bay Area was presented on Sunday evening, March 13, at Le Petit Trianon, San Jose. The performers ranged in age from 13 to nearly 30, and, as usual at this annual event, the playing was breathtaking in both skill and maturity.

Aaron Rosenthal, aged 17, is from Castro Valley and studies with Hans Boepple. He gave a thoughtful performance of Beethoven's Op.28 Sonata in D, with good tone and balance. In the first movement, he excelled in the cantabile of the second subject, and in the more difficult flourishes, which he brought off with panache, but some of the simpler passages such as the opening low D's and the first subject material could have been made more interesting and rhythmical. The slow movement came alive in the major section with the delightfully precise pickup to the staccato triplets, and the soft close was beautifully done. The Scherzo contained a lively trio, and the hurdy-gurdy start to the Rondo had good rhythm and led to fluid linked arpeggios, witty development, and a pretty start to the quasi presto, growing to a dramatic ending.

Next we heard the youngest performer, Amanda Wang from Palo Alto, who is 13 and has studied with Hans Boepple for six years. She belied her years with a confident and vibrant performance of the most unusual work in the whole program, Emma Lou Diemer's Toccata, which uses extended techniques for entertaining musical purposes. Written in 1979 for a pupil of Diemer's 'whose fine technique, personality, and hand-span of not over an octave were taken into consideration', the work was ideally suited to Wang, whose arm length was also sufficient for resting the whole left forearm on a silent cluster of keys to release their harmonics, and for reaching inside the piano for “hand-dampening … and sweeping and patting of the strings', in the words of the composer. Some of the resulting sounds were like a washboard, and timpani, and a harp. The whole was delivered with such precise timing, and ear for the sonorities, as to be spell-binding. One was led to wonder whether the young Evelyn Glennie sounded like this, early in her percussive career.

Kenric Tam is also from Palo Alto, and at age 14 is a student of John McCarthy at the San Francisco Conservatory. Offering Chopin's Op.22 Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise in its solo version, he went from strength to strength. The lovely opening melody of the Andante was played with all the smoothness of its title, although the left hand accompaniment seemed a shade lumpy. Tam's body language conveyed his concentration, and this was the kind of music you hope will never end. But end it must, with the brief transcription of Chopin’s orchestral introduction to the Polonaise, after which the orchestral part can mercifully be dispensed with. Tam launched into this joyous display movement with a wonderfully idiomatic Polonaise rhythm and sensitivity of touch, allied to perfect synchronization of the hands and accuracy and delicacy of the octaves. There were some delicious throwaway high endings to phrases, and electrifying running triplets like a current running through the keys. The brilliance was impressively controlled and expressive.

The second half of the concert was given by two excellent, experienced young pianists from further afield, both of whom had won prizes in previous years in the International Russian Music Piano Competition held annually in this same hall.

Soyoung Yoon is from South Korea, where she received a Master's degree in Piano Performance, before coming to this country and completing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Texas in 2003.

The shorter work in her program was Prokofiev's Op.11 Toccata, which she chose to play first, rather than second as advertised—moving it, as it were, from an encore position to a warm-up spot. Few pianists would be so courageous as to warm up on such a demanding work, a four-minute moto perpetuo at a brisk tempo, but it was played faultlessly. The momentum was well maintained, with the rhythm of the driving sixteenth notes established on the repeated D's at the start, and the dissonances gradually spreading out from there. The first half ends by subsiding to two bars of eighth note D's, and then there is an eighth note rest—the only breather from the incessant sixteenths in the whole piece. Yoon emphasized the ff in the second half with some heavier pedaling, adding sonority at some loss of incisiveness, whereas the first half had been exceptionally clear, with some rapid flutter-pedaling. The coda is a thrilling crescendo, with elaborated chromatic scales rising to a last appearance of the arpeggio figure and a glissando to the final D octave chord, which brought the audience to the edge of their seats if not quite out of them.

Rachmaninov's Sonata No.2 in B flat minor, played by Yoon in its 1931 revision, was originally composed in 1913, one year later than the Prokofiev Toccata, and it was intriguing to be reminded of this overlapping of a fine late flowering of romanticism with the dashing avant garde of the twentieth century. Rachmaninov was never completely satisfied with the work, and did not record it, reputedly preferring Horowitz's interpretation to his own. Nevertheless, it has become established in the repertoire of virtuoso pianists, despite having only two memorable melodies—the 12/8 second subject in the first movement (which the composer could not resist slipping in at the end of the slow movement too), and the main theme of the slow movement itself. Most of the work is one long paean to the key of B flat minor, with typical Rachmaninov inventive and pianistic development of slender materials, often moving by steps and half steps, and in this work mostly descending. The first bar, which appears to be a flourish falling to the bass B flat octave, turns out to have thematic significance not only in the first movement, but also in the middle section of the slow movement, and in the finale. Likewise, the surprise appearance of B flat major near the start of the work is taken up again immediately in the finale.

Soyoung Yoon gave a memorable performance of the sonata, with remarkable technical mastery at the service of an intellectual grasp of the work's architecture and its composer's thought processes. The reflective development section of the first movement was most persuasive, and subtle colorings and terrace dynamics were in evidence. The slow movement was quiet and yet intense, with the turbulent middle section well paced as it led to its single ff climax. The finale came to sound like a concerto, with bass rumblings on the piano substituting for the orchestra. In fact, to a pianist's ears, the piano part sounded even grander for not having to compete with the distractions of an orchestra. The ending is one of Rachmaninov's best, and the cascading alternating hands leading to the final monumental chords came off brilliantly to close a very satisfying rendering. By comparison with the Van Cliburn 2001 Gold Medal standard of Olga Kern (now audible online again at www.cliburn.org as a test for WATCH VIDEO—click on register now), Soyoug Yoon was less stormily dramatic (she wasn't playing in the Van Cliburn finals), but seemed to have the more compelling flow and perspective on the work as a whole.

As the final performer, we were fortunate to hear Kana Mimaki, who had agreed at relatively short notice to replace Vlada Vassilieva, who had visa complications in arranging to travel from Mexico. Kana grew up in Tokyo and obtained a Bachelor of Music degree at the Tokyo National University of Music and Fine Arts, before proceeding to a Master of Music degree at the San Francisco Conservatory in 2001.

Her performance of Chopin's Op.47 Ballade No.3 in A flat was notable for its expressive subtlety within a truly Chopinesque dynamic range. Resisting the temptation to exploit the power of a large modern Steinway, Mimaki gave us a polished and stylish account of this Allegretto piece, with its 6/8 metre by turns graceful, lilting, and restless. The pleasing restraint in the earlier pages served to enhance the later runs and arpeggios, which rippled evenly and effortlessly, with golden tone. Most of the pianists in the audience would have attempted to play this ballade at some stage of their careers, but few would have succeeded in playing it quite as well as this.

The totally different character of Liszt's Mephisto Waltz No.1 was apparent from the start, with a bigger sound and demonic energy to suit this transcription of the Dance at the Inn from Lenau's Faust. All manner of glittering keyboard gymnastics were on show as the waltz time was put to uses not envisaged by Chopin. The slow amoroso middle section in D flat was gorgeously yearning, and then Mimaki launched into the Presto sections with relish and commanding technique. There were pearly repeated notes, and interludes with delicate rubato, even some jaunty 2/4 to keep the dancers at the inn on their toes, before the huge contrary motion climax. This was a dazzling finish, combining musicianship and virtuosity.