Benjamin Grosvenor: Ex-Wunderkind

Buzz with Benjamin Grosvenor in Singapore

 20^th Singapore International Piano Festival.  School of the Arts Concert Hall.  Singapore.  June 22, 2013.  Music’s most famous wunderkind (from German: "wonder child") is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who, by age 10, was being carted around Austria by his famous father, Leopold, and was performing his own compositions as well as those of others.  Well, he turned out pretty good, but many other wunderkinds don’t fare so well.  The problem for all of those child prodigies is that they quite soon grow up, so that they are no longer a “kind,” and what was adorable at age 9, is just silly at age 20, and what was amazing at age 11, is commonplace at age 21.  The trick for all former wunderkinds, is to remain a “wunder” after they lose their “kinder” status.  Benjamin Grosvenor has done just that.

Grosvenor, who will turn age 21 shortly, has been playing the piano to acclaim since his early teens, and would fit anyone’s definition of a prodigy.  He has never been out of the public eye, but his more recent renown no longer dwells on his still young age: his playing is so profound and mature that it bears no relevance to his age.

Grosvenor’s Singapore recital did not just engage the audience, it enthralled it.  I have nothing to add to The Straits Times review, which follows.  Suffice it to say, Grosvenor is not only a wunder, but one who will doubtless continue to thrill all those privileged enough to hear him.  As the reviewer so aptly said:  “Grosvenor is not the next big thing, he already is the big thing. Step aside, pianists.”

Pianist Benjamin Grosvenor has amazing intellect, great technical prowess

Review From:The Straits Times, posted on 26 June at 7:45 AM

By Albert Lin

Many of the world's best musicians have graced the concert halls of Singapore, yet rarely has one as young as British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor left such a deep impression. Attending his recital was almost like experiencing music for the very first time, where his interpretations were the only ones that made sense.

Unlike more celebrated contemporaries, Grosvenor shows no interest in wild orgasmic facial expressions or attention-seeking theatrics, and his demeanour suggested that he was embarrassed to be onstage while music-making was in progress. He offers only what the music requires - his soul, mind and dexterous facility.

The textural clarity he brought out of Bach's Partita No. 4 in D only hinted at his immaculate control of the instrument. Each movement was masterfully poised and his grasp of rhythmic inflections in each dance brought out the folk-like qualities. Purists would probably scorn his use of pedal, but here it added more to the performance than it subtracted.

Performances of Chopin's works are often plagued by obscene sentimentality, yet there was hardly a hint of rubato in his approach to Chopin's F-sharp minor Polonaise and the Andante Spianato and Grand Polonaise. The underlying poetry resonates beauty on its own and Grosvenor truly grasped the spirit of the piano, as the composer's music has oft been described to possess.

In the F-sharp minor, he generated a warm sonority from the Steinway grand and dove headfirst into the daunting octaves. The sense of heroism was overwhelming and the sheer intensity of the repetitive middle section was suffocating.

The glistening sheen he painted with the opening Andante Spianato, accompanied by a hypnotic wheeling left-hand figuration, was juxtaposed with a different approach to the Polish dance in the Grand Polonaise. While Chopin infuses his polonaises with elements of the military, it traditionally is a rather noble and courtly dance. This slant allowed the pianist to extract elegance out of the grace notes that litter the work and enabled the free-spiritedness of the work to come to the fore.

While Scriabin's works are often characterised by his obsession with dark magic and sorcery, his earlier smaller works were of immense melodic beauty. In five of his mazurkas from the Op. 3 and the The Op. 38 Valse, the resemblance to Chopin was striking. Grosvenor not only elicited a prism of colours from the miniatures, but was also alert to any hint of eroticism in the music. The thoughtful performance brought the listener through the development of Scriabin's craft towards an impressionistic mysticism.

Granados' Valse Poeticos and Robert Schulz-Evler's extravagant "Arabesques" Variations on the Blue Danube Waltz closed the highly charged recital. In the Granados waltzes, scenes of flamboyant nature were artfully painted with a keen sense of proportion. For the first time that night, he allowed a hearty dose of lingering as the works required.

The ceaseless avalanche of running notes in Schulz-Evler's Arabesques was no match for Grosvenor's gargantuan technical prowess and they were tossed aside effortlessly. At times, the manner in which the melodic line was projected above the filigree made it sound like there were three hands playing.

The appreciative audience gave an enthusiastic ovation, and the pianist obliged with three encores, including Godowsky's transcription of Saint-Saens' The Swan and the barnstorming Boogie Woogie Etude by Morton Gould. Cue flashback of the late Shura Cherkassky's recital here in 1994, perhaps the last time a pianist astounded with such intellect.

Grosvenor is not the next big thing, he already is the big thing. Step aside, pianists.

Pianist Daniel-Ben Pienaar: A Risk Taker

20^th Singapore International Piano Festival.  School of the Arts Concert Hall.  Singapore.  June 21, 2013.  All over the world, business risk takers, entrepreneurs, are being celebrated and their talents touted to the rest of us as being indispensable to follow.  But, in music, there are also risk takers, and like their business counterparts, they sometimes succeed and sometimes fail.  The well-regarded South African/English pianist, Daniel-Ben Pienaar, took a big risk in programming all 24 of Bach’s preludes and fugues of Book 1 of the Well-Tempered Clavier, into one recital program:  45 minutes of preludes and fugues, a little respite (a 15 minute intermission), followed by another 45 minutes of more preludes and fugues.  That’s it folks, now go home.

What’s the risk?  Boredom, the result of too much of a good thing.  Naturally, you have to be a superb pianist to commit this intricate music to memory, and Pienaar is a very good pianist, and you have to have the stamina and power of intense concentration to play all of these preludes and fuges in one sitting.  But, come on, there’s an audience involved, and what about them?  In Bangkok, where I live, you wouldn’t have to worry about the audience:  they’d have their iPhones and iPads turned on in short order, then some talking to their neighbours, general fidgeting, a few photos during the performance with and without flash, and so it would go.  Singapore, however, is well-behaved and there’s no easy way out of being bored,  just endure it.     

I found Pienaar’s excursion through Book 1 of the Well-Tempered Clavier endlessly fascinating, indeed, exciting.  Each prelude and fugue sounded like a self-contained miniature to which Pienaar was dedicated to exploring with something different, but within an interpretive framework that was always Johann Sebastian Bach.  This kind of coloring and subtlety is only possible on the modern piano, and Pienaar never hesitated to effectively use the pedals and the possibilities of the keyboard in the service of his view of Bach.  His performance would not have satisfied the early music or original instrument gang, but it was not a romantic performance either, which means that it lacked excess.  For me, Pienaar’s risk paid off, and judging by the applause from the large audience and comments I heard afterwards, I was not the only audience member similarly pleased.

    

P.S.:  Pienaar will be at it again, this time in London, at  the wonderful Kings Place concert hall (far more comfortable than the venerable Wigmore), where he will play all of Book 1 of the Well-Tempered Clavier on December 5, followed, if you can believe it, by all of Book 2 on the following night.  If I were in London, I’d go both nights.

Now, here's a real review of Pienaar's Singapore appearance, from The Straits Times:
 

DANIEL-BEN PIENAAR Piano Recital

20th Singapore International Piano Festival

SOTA Concert Hall

Friday (21 June 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 24 June 2013 with the title "Bach with pizzazz".

The thought of J.S.Bach’s Preludes and Fugues, frequent subjects of piano examinations and competitions, often sends young people recoiling with horror and into post-traumatic stress with the memory of futile music lessons and the inevitable knuckle-rapping. Thus the notion of sitting through 24 of these in a single concert is a daunting prospect, sure recipe for tedium and indigestion.

Or so we thought. Bach specialists on the piano like Angela Hewitt and Andras Schiff have made it a life mission to perform both books of The Well-Tempered Clavier en bloc to adoring devotees worldwide. And so has debutant to the Singapore International Piano Festival, the South Africa-born and London-based pianist Daniel-Ben Pienaar, who offered the entire First Book in one sitting.

Each book begins with a paired Prelude and Fugue in sunny C major, and works its way through alternating major and minor keys by ascending a semitone with each number, and closing in the sombre key of B minor. The first Prelude is the most familiar, a play on the simple C major triad. Yet when Pienaar played, it sounded radically different. Absurdly fast was the first thought that came to mind.

However it is known that Bach left no tempo or dynamic markings, thus allowing the performer the freest rein to indulge in whatever fancies. Clearly this was the invitation to an account that is unencumbered by convention or tradition, one that assailed and piqued the senses. Like the late Glenn Gould before him, Pienaar was determined to make the listener hear with different ears.

And it worked, largely because he is a sensitive soul allied with the keenest sense of imagination. Without going into the minutiae of each piece, the set was delivered as a breezy whole that kept one riveted throughout. The contrapuntal playing was projected with utter clarity. Nothing sounded preserved or pre-cooked, and he rarely applied the same seasonings to each piece.

Varying the tonal palette, he could make the piano sound as light as a harpsichord in the fast toccata-like preludes. Applying more pedal, he also created organ-like sonorities for the slower fugues, and because the piano was foreign to Bach’s era, each number became a transcription freshly minted.

As to the various moods conjured up in the evening, there was a cornucopia’s worth. Moody elegies alternated with joyous and energised dances, and the improvisatory feel applied to many of the pieces gave the uncanny impression of a jazzman at work. Whoever thought that of crusty old Papa Johann Sebastian?  

Pienaar’s return with the Second Book of the WTC 48 is keenly awaited.     

    

Yevgeny Sudbin: Golden Boy of a Golden Age

Buzz with Yevgeny Sudbin following his Singapore recital

20^th Singapore International Piano Festival.  School of the Arts Concert Hall.  Singapore.  June 20, 2013.  We are living in the golden age of piano playing.  Emmanuel Axe said precisely this recently, and Anthony Tommasini of the NYT agrees.  I, myself, have heard many of the past pianists usually included in the mid-20^th century pantheon of the golden age of piano playing (e.g., Rubinstein, Horowitz, Richter, Gieseking, Bachauer, Myra Hess, etc.), and I’ve known for some time now that right now is the golden age of piano performance.  Precisely why this should be so, I’m not sure, but it is indisputable that today, virtuosos are commonplace; everyone plays the Liszt Paganini Variations or the Rach 3, usually by age 16 or younger.  All of today’s performers are in the Olympics.

This democratization, if you will, of piano playing presents a lot of problems for those many aspirants to the big time; after all, none of them can claim to play faster, cleaner, more powerfully, more virtuosically (I know there’s no such word), than any of the others.  A few have been successful in becoming media personalities of sorts, chief among them being the Chinese pianist Lang Lang, who now has contracts to endorse sports shoes (I forgot the brand that he works for) and BMWs.  Winning major piano competitions is a chance to separate from the crowd, but it is amazing how many major winners fade into relative obscurity, and how many top pianists have successfully avoided the competition route completely.  

So what does one do?  Easy to answer: one makes beautiful music.  But, in order to make beautiful music, one has to have something to say.  In order to have something to say, one has to first lead a life that has some inner meaning.  That meaning might not be obvious from the details of existence (we know a lot about Rubinstein, not so much about Richter), but it expresses through the medium of the keyboard.  Why play Beethoven’s Appassionata again if one has nothing new to say about it?  The genius of the great composers is that they permit endless interpretations, so the raw material from which to construct a new interpretation or a great performance, is at hand.  Why play the Appassionata like Rubinstein?  I’d rather listen to Rubinstein, rather than someone who plays like Rubinstein. 

 

Yevgeny Sudbin, now in his early 30’s, has the magic.  His technique is as good as anyone around (and that’s saying a lot), but he doesn’t play like anyone else:  he plays like Sudbin.  I didn’t have to listen to him play for long (I first heard Sudbin live four years ago) to know that he was trying to say something about the music---not just play it.  Exactly what that “something” is, is beyond my analytic ability to express.  It is too trite to say that it is poetic, or deep, or original, or whatever professional writers say about performances they review.  But, many years ago, I heard the great Broadway team of Betty Comden and Adolph Green tell what makes a Broadway show a hit;: they said, “it works.”  That’s it---Sudbin’s performances of whatever he’s playing “works.”

As for Sudbin’s performance on June 20, which I found to be one of the best piano evenings I can remember, I will leave that to the very excellent reviewer, Chang Tou Liang, writing in The Straits Times, a review with which I totally agree and could not say nearly as well.  Chang’s review follows in full: 

This review was published in The Straits Times on 22 June 2013

Sudbin Amazes at Piano Fest Opening

By Chang Tou Liang

The 20th edition of the venerated Singapore International Piano Festival opened with a recital by a pianist that reflects the spirit and ethos of the nation’s premier keyboard event. Young Russian Yevgeny Sudbin is on the rising arc of a considerable concert career. He is an artist unafraid to take on unusual and adventurous recital programmes to challenge and to provoke.

Although the underlying theme of this festival was “Music and Movement”, with an acknowledged nod to the dance genre, Sudbin centred his recital on varying states of mood and mind. With it, he pondered on life, with its joys and toils, and mortality. An entire half of Franz Liszt’s music encapsulated this viewpoint.

Opening with Funerailles (from the cycle of Poetic And Religious Harmonies), its tolling bells were deliberately oppressive rather than exultant. Through this arose an air of nobility, representing his downtrodden Hungarian kin and their call to arms. The hair-raising episode of stampeding octaves was judged to perfection, which was later echoed by the Tenth Transcendental Study in F minor that closed the set.

In between both works was pure poetry, flowing lyricism in Petrarch’s Sonnet No.104 which decried Pace non trovo (I Find No Piece), and the ever-expanding chords of Harmonies du soir (Evening Harmonies) which reassured all was well in the world. The audience’s insistence of applauding between each piece must have distracted, interrupting Sudbin’s train of thought for the beginning of the closing etude in order to take a bow. A minor memory lapse was an unfortunate result.

There were thankfully no such intrusions in the second half, which began with a portrayal of grief in two minor key Scarlatti Sonatas – beautifully realised - and Sudbin’s own transcription of the Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem. In the latter, he explored harmonies and resonances more far-ranging than Liszt himself.

The final part of the recital was devoted to the pleasurable state of ecstasy. Debussy’s L’Isle Joyeuse delighted in series of trills and rhythmic thrills, exhibiting an innocent happiness with a rapturous tumble to the bottom of the keyboard. Quite different was Scriabin’s Fifth Sonata, sometimes called “The Poem of Ecstasy”, for its fulminant, carnal outbursts and flame-throwing to the highest registers.

Sudbin possessed the requisite technique and rapier-quick reflexes to make both pieces work. Comparisons with the legacies of Richter and Horowitz are not out of place here. Three encores, by Scriabin, Scarlatti and Sudbin’s own tongue-in-cheek and uproariously vulgar conflation of Chopin’s Minute Waltz (by way of Hungarian show-boater György Cziffra and Ravel’s La Valse) had the audience in stitches.

The reaction of amazement and sometimes disbelief is one regularly encountered in this festival over the last two decades. Long may that continue.