In a welcome initiative, Piano+ presented a joint recital by two illustrious winners of prestigious international competitions – violinist Jenny Jin, winner of the 2023 Michael Hill International Violin Competition held in New Zealand, and Jeonghwan Kim, winner of the 2023 Sydney International Piano competition. Both instrumentalists hail from South Korea but are now based in New York and Berlin respectively, and were meeting for the first time to undertake this concert tour. The Melbourne Recital Centre concert marked the final date of their 14-concert tour of New Zealand and Australia.
The recital was an unusual one, featuring three solos and two joint performances.
Opening the concert was a joint presentation featuring Wieniawski’s Polonaise de Concert. With a training pedigree that includes both Curtis and Juilliard, it is no surprise that Jin, a prolific competition winner, unleashed a pitch-perfect display of violin fireworks, navigating the acrobatic LH writing and double-stops with ease. Meanwhile, Kim remained very much in the background, providing supportive, yet discreet and nuanced accompaniment. While the work’s undoubted brilliance was confidently projected, the rhythm and aristocratic character of the polonaise dance proved somewhat elusive on this occasion.
Then followed Ysaÿe’s Solo Violin Sonata No 5 in G major, composed almost exactly 100 years ago. Jin announced the eerie open-string and LH pizzicato-laden opening of the opening movement L’Aurore with beguiling calm. At times one wished for more giocoso in the succeeding Danse rustique, which seemed too earth-bound on the night.
Kim’s solo contribution for the night was Chopin’s Andante Spianato and Grand Polonaise, originally conceived with orchestral accompaniment, but now better known in its solo version. His reverie-like lyricism and gossamer touch served the opening Andante well. Kim’s nimble finger-work then sailed through cascades of scales and arpeggios, traversing the full extent of the keyboard in the ensuing Polonaise with ostensible ease. The Polish dance’s characteristic and defining anapest rhythm was delivered with sharp exaggeration, while episodic material provided Kim with an opportunity to reveal the fifty shades of piano that he seemingly has at his fingertips.
Michael Norris’s “Waipounamu” was a compulsory work at the Michael Hill Competition and unlike many competition commissions, it is a work worthy of being re-heard. Its environmental water influences came through in the writing that also featured throat-singing-like effects, non-vibrato tremolos and drone-like figures, and Jin, surveying all its innovative techniques with unruffled aplomb proved to be a persuasive advocate for this new work.
To round out the program in the intimate confines of the Primrose Potter Salon, Jin and Kim united once again in Saint-Saens’ too-neglected Sonata No. 1 in D minor. The sonata begins with the two instrumentalists in unison, and their singularity of purpose unfolded with conviction here. Jin delivered her part in the sonata with a rich vibrato from go-to-whoa, very much the soloist reveling in the work’s unbridled late-Romantic lyricism, while Kim delivered his virtuosic writing with deference, never threatening to overwhelm the soloist. Kim engaged the listener throughout with his highly-nuanced tonal palette (heightened by his extensive use of the una corda pedal) and deft underlining of unexpected contours. Not surprisingly for recent international competition winners, each of the soloists performed their respective roles in the sonata with unfussed technical facility, most notably in the whirlwind moto perpetuo sections of the demanding finale. Overall, one could have wished for more interaction between these two emerging artists, not only in terms of overt visual communication with each other – Jin stood well in front of Kim, her back towards the pianist almost throughout the entire sonata – but more so in their musical dialogues, where the exchange of musical ideas in equal partnership did not quite seamlessly bond on this occasion.
These are two obviously prodigiously talented young performers embarking on what will be a long musical journey, hopefully towards career longevity. Kim’s blistering account of Bartok’s complex Piano Concerto No 2, an Everest of the concerto genre if ever there was one, still burns in the memory, and generated huge excitement in the piano finals in Sydney. Notwithstanding the loose Polonaise connection between some of the works, this joint recital was, perhaps necessarily, something of a mixed bag affair, rather than a carefully designed, stylistically integrated recital, allowing the performers to reveal only a glimpse of their manifest artistic potential. But it was certainly a novel enterprise and one worth undertaking by Piano+. A program of substantive violin and piano sonatas may have made for a more fulfilling recital. Nevertheless, I look forward to following these two artists’ progression as they wend their way through the forest of performance opportunities that undoubtedly lie ahead.
Image supplied.
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Glenn Riddle reviewed “The Young Virtuosi”, a recital performed by Jenny Jin (violin) and Jeonghwan Kim (piano) at the Melbourne Recital Centre, Primrose Potter Salon on November 18, 2024.
