United Kingdom Edinburgh Worldwide Competition 2024 [10]: Seong-Jin Cho (piano, Queen’s Corridor, Usher Corridor), Kammerorchester Basel (Usher Corridor), 19 & 20.8.2024. (SRT)
Profitable the Worldwide Chopin Competitors isn’t any small feat, and Seong-Jin Cho, 2015’s winner, isn’t any small artist. In truth, he reinforces the (barely unfair) stereotype that that you must be the reincarnation of Liszt to achieve it.
How applicable, then, that there was Liszt in his Edinburgh Worldwide Competition Queen’s Corridor recital, nothing lower than the second quantity of the Années de pèlerinage. Listening to them as a whole set reinforces what a fantastically well-constructed work of music that is – why on earth don’t we hear extra of Liszt in immediately’s live performance halls?! – and it allowed Cho to showcase plenty of completely different components of his method. There was bell-like readability to his Sposalizio and gloomy weight to his Penseroso, dispelled by a light-hearted airiness in Salvator Rosa. The three Petrarch Sonnets roiled with turbulent emotion, however the melody was all the time clear, glowing excessive over the inconceivable of chords rumbling beneath, and giving an total unity to the sonnets as a subset withing the work.
The Dante Sonata, nonetheless, was a sensation. Cho performed it with readability and poise and, critically, an understanding of the way it all fitted collectively. There was weight and darkness to the doom-laden early sections representing (maybe) the souls of the damned in Hell, however when it bought to the foremost key comfort of the second topic Cho utterly modified the type of his enjoying, rippling and shimmering with terrific delicacy as he introduced real gentle and shade to Liszt’s infernal texture. For all of his power in Liszt’s inconceivable fistfuls of notes, he isn’t a very ostentatious pianist. Usually he sat inventory nonetheless on the keyboard, misplaced within the contemplation of his music whereas his fingers did the work. At a few of the quiet moments, nonetheless, he leaned so shut into the keyboard that he should have been in a position to odor it. When the Queen’s Corridor crowd erupted into applause, he took it with such understated grace that he would possibly as properly have been shocked by it.
His Ravel was a little bit heavy-handed compared; too Lisztian, maybe? The Menuet vintage harrumphed a little bit, and if the Sonatine was extra delicate then it nonetheless defaulted in direction of the loud aspect. The Valses nobles, nonetheless, had been by turns playful, delicate, arch and muscular, all with highly effective bass traces and generally delicate tracery within the melodies. A wonderful showcase for his method, in brief.
Cho additionally stepped in to avoid wasting the next night’s Usher Corridor live performance, changing the indisposed and beforehand marketed pianist in Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto. It was fascinating listening to him in repertoire that’s ostensibly much less thunderous than Liszt. In equity, his strategy was assertive relatively than dreamy, however there was nonetheless an total mellifluousness to his enjoying that suited the contemplative temper of the primary motion very properly. He spoke (on the EIF’s social media channels) about how he sees the concerto as a sequence of dialogues, like chamber music, and that’s how he balanced the piece as a complete. Solely often had been there a number of problems with ensemble with the orchestra, maybe all the way down to the shortage of readability over who was in cost: Cho or Julia Schröder, who directed the live performance from the chief’s chair.
Nonetheless, the true stars of that live performance had been the orchestra, the marvellous Kammerorchester Basel, who performed this music of the nineteenth century as if the ink on it was nonetheless moist. It was tough to inform whether or not they had been enjoying on intestine or trendy strings, however in some ways in which was the purpose: they evoked a complete vanished period of musical efficiency as if it was all utterly regular, and the consequence was thrilling.
A part of that was all the way down to the selection of the devices, with two completely different units of horns used, and a few terrifically characterful interval winds that made an enormous distinction in Emilie Mayer’s Symphony No.5. They paid Mayer the good praise of taking her severely, and she or he got here throughout as a significant and thrilling voice in her personal proper; proof that referring to her as ‘the feminine Beethoven’ does her no favours. Mayer’s symphony was stuffed with intensely labored musical argument, notably within the first and third actions, whereas the finale resolved on a serious key solely after having to work very arduous for it. But she additionally wrote music of probably the most great softness for the sluggish motion, unusually inserting the sound correct in the midst of the orchestra, writing for a beautiful choir of cellos, violas, horns and clarinets. The Basel gamers made it sound utterly magical; clear but additionally beautiful. In brief, the most effective of each worlds.
And the live performance overture by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (when are we going to lastly decide on what to name this girl?!) made for a cracking curtain raiser in a vibrant and thrilling C main, the violins sounding vibrant as a button as they whizzed up and down their melodic traces, and making the longer sounding notes mutate earlier than our ears. A deal with.
Simon Thompson
The Edinburgh Worldwide Competition runs at venues throughout town till Sunday twenty fifth August. Click on right here for additional particulars.
19.8.2024 – Seong-Jin Cho (piano), Queen’s Corridor.
Ravel – Menuet Vintage; Sonatine; Valses nobles et sentimentales
Liszt – Années de pèlerinage, Deuxième année: Italie, S 161
20.8.2024 – Kammerorchester Basel / Julia Schröder (director), Usher Corridor.
Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel – Overture in C
Beethoven – Piano Concerto No.4
Emilie Mayer – Symphony No.5 in F minor
