Credentials don’t come much better than being a laureate of both the Van Cliburn and Tchaikovsky piano competitions. Refusing to rest on any competitive laurels however, Yeol Eum Son has cemented a formidable career in the last decade, including previous appearances at the Melbourne Recital Centre.
A tale of two halves, the first part of the night’s program featured rarely heard works that would be unfamiliar to most concert-goers. A formidable pianist with a renowned reputation as sight-reader and sympathetic accompanist, Bizet left only a small body of works for piano, of rather uneven quality and one hears very little of the author of Carmen in Bizet’s Chromatic Variations for piano. Yet the Variations represent the composer’s pianistic chef d’oeuvre, and were clearly inspired by Beethoven’s 32 Variations in C minor WoO 80 – a work that the great LvB himself did not hold in high regard. Son, with her enviable facility and sense of colour, wrought about as much musical interest as could be gleaned from these variations, which tend to rely rather too much on tremolo effects.
Continuing the Variations theme of the first half, Son presented Karl Czerny’s Variations on a theme of Rode. Czerny, the most renowned piano pedagogue of Europe in his day, wrote thousands of piano studies that continue to haunt the souls and fingers of young piano students around the world today. Yet he had real ambitions, unrealised, of being a composer of serious note. Son’s deft finger-work brought impressive lightness of touch, delicacy and articulatory clarity, together with an appropriate dash of genteel humour to these inoffensive variations.
Some might argue that Czerny’s greatest contribution to music was indeed his training of the young Franz Liszt, who went on to become the most celebrated and revered pianist of his and perhaps of any era. Czerny was also, not surprisingly, the dedicatee of Liszt’s twelve Transcendental Etudes, a collection that represents one of the most redoubtable pianistic challenges in the repertoire. Son chose the lengthiest and possibly the most poetic of the Etudes, Ricordanza, (thereby linking it to the previous Czerny work, which also goes by the name La Ricordanza). Aided by supple wrists and an equally supple rubato, Son realised the languid atmosphere of this essay in nostalgia with suitably improvisatory abandon. Her wistful exploration of sonority and timbre made one forget the considerable and awkward pianistic twists and turns that Liszt embeds in the writing.
Closing the first half, again a set of variations, came Charles-Valentin Alkan’s Variations on a theme of Steibelt. Alkan, one time neighbour of Chopin and, according to some accounts, a pianistic rival to Liszt himself, is perhaps best remembered by musical amateurs for an entirely fabricated and somewhat anti-Semitic story about his manner of death. His music has its own Australian champion in the remarkable Sydney-based pianist Stephanie McCallum, but generally his most celebrated piano works present such technically daunting summits that few dare tackle them. The present Variations, Alkan’s Opus 1, represent an extraordinary achievement for a neophyte 14 year-old composer. Alkan’s pianistic prowess established itself very early on and these Variations bear witness to his preternatural gifts. Son explored the 6 variations and Coda with effortless aplomb, exploring resonant pedalling effects that suited both the Steinway instrument and the Elisabeth Murdoch space.
While the first half of the program provided more of the bonbon, confectionary fare, it was the second half that decidedly delivered the meat and veg substance of the program. Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata can so easily instill terror even into pianists who are rightly renowned as Beethoven specialists. In this, his keyboard magnum opus, its slow movement alone can last as long as most Classical sonatas do in their entirety. After a change of dress at interval, returning in more sober black attire, Son settled into the task and began her musical journey with authority, surveying the vast canvas that is Opus 106 with steely mettle, technical assurance, rhythmic certitude, and an ineluctable sense of line that commanded one’s attention throughout.
Beethoven’s characteristically dramatic subito dynamic changes featured prominently, especially in the opening movement. The large-scale panorama that is the expansive third movement was impeccably timed and judged, holding the audience’s rapt attention from first note to last – no easy task, that in lesser hands can meander aimlessly. The labyrinthine fugal finale, with its death-defying leaps, trills, double notes and hurtling semiquaver runs, is something of a pianistic battle-field. Fifteen pages of dazzlingly vertiginous counterpoint, replete with assorted traps and pitfalls, bring this glorious work to a magnificently thrilling close. This is an essay in high-speed tightrope-walking, and Son was up for the challenge. Her blazing, laser-like articulatory precision allowed intricate contrapuntal textures to emerge with trouble-free clarity. This is not pianistic writing for the faint-hearted. Beethoven’s late fugues are unforgiving, more orchestral in conception than being written for a mere ten fingers. This was absolutely arresting playing; Son had given her all, and surmounted her self-imposed challenge with both musical authority and technical assurance in equal doses.
Photo supplied.
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Glenn Riddle reviewed the piano recital given by Yeol Eum Son as part of the Exquisite Classical Experiences 2024 at the Melbourne Recital Centre, Elisabeth Murdoch Hall on June 4, 2024.
