Date: Tues, October 31, 2006

Pianist rich in technique but too often hides soul

By Richard Scheinin
Mercury News

The young Chinese pianist Sa Chen has won high praise and high marks from judges in the most prestigious international competitions. Her arrival over the weekend in San Jose for a recital at Le Petit Trianon therefore was the cause of some hot anticipation by piano buffs looking for the next star in the firmament.

It's always risky judging an artist on the basis of a single first glimpse. However, Chen, who has appeared widely in Asia and Europe and was making her Bay Area debut, performed with mixed results Sunday night at Trianon.

She has a walloping technique, to be sure. Her ability to navigate the bracing counter-rhythms, preposterously difficult chords and delicately spun passage-work in a Spanish reverie by Isaac Albeniz, as she did, is daunting. No wonder she took third place in last year's Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, the world's biggest piano sweepstakes.

Yet there were stretches of the recital when I imagined Chen on a sand bar, untouched by the swirling musical waters all around. She seemed to be playing the music from just outside its boundaries, a disappointment — though, at 26, and with so much talent at her fingertips, she has plenty of time to imagine her way into the deep currents.

The program, part of the Steinway Society's recital series, opened with Mozart's Sonata in F major, K. 332, which Chen began with a keen blend of lyricism and logic. There is a nice weight to her touch, allowing for clear note-by-note definition as well as an easy, even carefree, flow.

But this piece, which teems with melody and tender emotion, grew stiff during its most tender moments, in the Adagio. It was a subtle thing, but noticeable. Where had the chill come from?

Perhaps Chen had been flustered by the ushers' strange decision to seat latecomers to the sold-out performance after she had begun playing. Or maybe she was jet-lagged; she was bumped from her original flight from Beijing to San Francisco, arriving Saturday, 24 hours later than planned and with a busy schedule ahead, including a private house concert that night.

Still, the sense of remove in the Mozart was a little distressing.

Chen's Chopin was much better. She has a real sense of the composer's melancholy nature and of the artificial world in which he operated; his waltzes only hint at emotions, which are held just in check behind a screen of aristocratic decorum.

The Waltz in A minor, Opus 34, No. 2, with which Chen opened a set of five waltzes, seemed to rise through a veil, notes falling like gentle droplets. It was gorgeous -- and immediately was followed by the whirlwind of the Grande Valse in A-flat Major, Opus 42, with its screeching finish.

After the set of five came Chopin's Polonaise-Fantasie in A-flat major, Opus 61, an extended wanderer of a piece that Liszt once described as "feverish . . . approaching madness." Unfortunately, Chen seemed to take its temperature, rather than partake of the fever.

The program's second half began with the young Chinese composer-pianist Wang Xiaohan's "Four Flowers." This slight but lovely work is full of Impressionistic colors and atmospherics; tremulous, Debussy-like clouds wedded to Chinese folk flourishes. "Bamboo," the third movement, was dreamy and calming, and Chen was visibly immersed.

The influence of Debussy persisted in Albeniz's "El Corpus en Sevilla" from the famous "Iberia" suite, a collection of remembrances of the composer's trip through Spain more than a century ago. Chen's clipped attacks successfully mimicked, without quite embracing, the rhythms of Spanish dance and song.

But the recital ended with an enthusiastic bang: Liszt's "Rhapsodie espagnole (Spanish Rhapsody)," with its richly massive chords, bounding rhythms and emotional gallantry, was made to order for Chen.

She embraced the bombast fully, a good thing. Next time, though, how about some Brahms, some Schubert or maybe even some Bach? Chen is talented enough to play down the show pieces and go after the mysteries.