Insistent tempo gives way to discord and furious finale

March 5, 2007

MUSIC REVIEW
YIN CHENGZONG
Melba Hall, March 1

Notable Chinese pianist Yin Chengzong, here to open the Impresaria organisation's year, comes to Australia with a more checkered history than most of his peers.

He was sent from Shanghai to study in Moscow and achieved fame at a young age by taking second place in the Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition of 1962; he came up against two slightly older, brilliant talents in Vladimir Ashkenazy and John Ogdon, who shared first prize.

Chengzong lived though the Cultural Revolution's anti-Western excesses, which viewed pianists with unconcealed hostility and saw the piano as decadent. He also contributed to the creation of that odd cultural flower of communism, the Yellow River Concerto, which he is performing during his Melbourne stay.

On Thursday, Chengzong presented a spare and straight classic program. In Galuppi's C Major Sonata, the pianist produced an elegant, carefully detailed display.

As in the night's major works, not every ornament came off with faultless sparkle but the slips were few and the changes in tempo and dynamic were accomplished with excellent security and idiomatic responsiveness.

For Beethoven's F minor Sonata Op. 57, the Appassionata, Chengzong revealed traces of his Russian training through an aggressive use of the sustaining pedal and the realisation of both outer movements as sustained rhetoric rather than abrupt flashes of temperament erupting out of gloomy mutterings. In this interpretation, the sonata has an insistence and rising tension that is calculated to bring the climaxes on to explosive effect, with little relief from the continually striving forward movement.

Such an approach makes for an engrossing experience, one where the performer's focus stays on the composer's emotional landscape without regard for the listener's stamina. Even the central Andante allowed no room for lingering as Chengzong maintained an insistent tempo through the chorale-tune and variations, preparing for the discordant chords that lead to the unsettled, eventually furious finale.

Finally, the Schubert B flat Sonata enjoyed a flexibility of approach in its spacious first movement, the punctuating pauses given just sufficient time so that the long movement's arc (given without the exposition repeat) was accomplished with a welcome tenderness. In the following Andante, Chengzong kept up a steady pace but might have been better served by applying some flexibility as several poignant decorative notes, those which involve a cross-over left hand, failed to register. In the finale, the performer also made more simple errors than expected.

But if the interpretation failed to satisfy completely, the major part of the work impressed for its sympathetic maturity, and many of us are kindly disposed towards any artist who treats great music on its own terms rather than highlighting technique.

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