Insistent tempo gives way to discord and furious finale
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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