本文发表在 rolia.net 枫下论坛A poised prodigy doesn't fail to impress
KEN WINTERS
Special to The Globe and Mail
Yundi Li, piano
At Roy Thomson Hall
In Toronto on Friday
Yundi Li's piano recital Friday night was a cultural experience of a very particular and bemusing kind.
Young Mr. Li -- he's now 24 -- won first prize at the Chopin International Competition in Warsaw in 2000, when he was just 18. The Chopin is one of the oldest and most highly regarded competitions in Europe. Past winners have included Maurizio Pollini, Martha Argerich, Garrick Ohlsson and Krystian Zimerman. The judging is severe. Before Li won it, in 2000, the first prize had been withheld for 15 years. What made the win even more remarkable was that Li had been trained entirely in China, first in his native city of Chongqing and then in Shenzhen, after his teacher Zhaoyi Dan moved to the latter city to teach at its Arts School.
The fairy tale continues. After Li won the Chopin competition, Deutsche Grammophon signed him to a recording contract committing itself to producing a CD a year by the young player through 2008. And in the meantime he has been giving recitals and concerts-with-orchestra in many of the main cities of the world, Asian, European, North American.
All this amounts to lavish endorsement. Yet it was an unaffected, dignified, handsome and already celebrated young man who came onto the platform Friday to play Mozart, Schumann and Liszt for a packed hall. Needless to say, one expected a great deal. Not surprisingly, a certain amount of that great deal was forthcoming. But perhaps not all of it.
There could be no doubt that the most extreme challenges of his exacting program met their match in Li's technical prowess. His posture at the keyboard is at once alert and easy. He can summon enormous strength when he needs it, and exemplary serenity in contrast. His hand and finger skills are prompt, and his accuracy is phenomenal.
But when it came to his music-making, the heart and soul of it, I had some reservations.
It's not that there was anything crass or wanton in his Mozart -- the Sonata in C, K. 330. On the contrary, it was 'good boy' Mozart: neat, clear, gentlemanly and, somehow, a little passive. It was, in fact, just not very interesting.
Then came his Schumann, Carnaval, Op. 9, in which the composer exercises his own divided identity -- the bold Florestan and the shy Eusebius -- in the imaginative, epigrammatic delineation of a whole procession of characters and dances. Carnaval is one of the signal works of the Romantic piano literature: vivid, quirky, delicate, bold, amusing and touching by turns. Li attacked it with more spirit and imbued it with more variety than his Mozart, but his playing seemed to be displaying the music's pianistic wares rather than conjuring its magic.
The final piece on his program, Franz Liszt's Sonata in B Minor, is an epoch-making hybrid of sonata form and variation form, achieved through remarkable transformations, rhythmic and harmonic, of its basic themes. It is a pianistic Mount Everest in the hands of a mature Sviatoslav Richter or Alfred Brendel, but it can be quite a lot less fascinating, however impressive, in less mature and distinctive hands, however capable. And so it was Friday in Li's impressive and capable account, obviously practised to a high polish and admirable as piano playing, but somehow a feat, a performance of a performance, rather than a musical revelation.
Nevertheless, the audience erupted into bravos and into the sparkling lights of dozens of digital cameras which had been politely kept dormant during the playing.
Li smiled very calmly and sweetly and responded with a major encore: Chopin's Grande Polonaise in E-Flat, Op. 22, divested of its preceding Andante spianato. And when that didn't quite satisfy the fans' desire for more, he played a minor encore: a pretty little soufflé of a thing based on a popular Chinese tune.更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net
KEN WINTERS
Special to The Globe and Mail
Yundi Li, piano
At Roy Thomson Hall
In Toronto on Friday
Yundi Li's piano recital Friday night was a cultural experience of a very particular and bemusing kind.
Young Mr. Li -- he's now 24 -- won first prize at the Chopin International Competition in Warsaw in 2000, when he was just 18. The Chopin is one of the oldest and most highly regarded competitions in Europe. Past winners have included Maurizio Pollini, Martha Argerich, Garrick Ohlsson and Krystian Zimerman. The judging is severe. Before Li won it, in 2000, the first prize had been withheld for 15 years. What made the win even more remarkable was that Li had been trained entirely in China, first in his native city of Chongqing and then in Shenzhen, after his teacher Zhaoyi Dan moved to the latter city to teach at its Arts School.
The fairy tale continues. After Li won the Chopin competition, Deutsche Grammophon signed him to a recording contract committing itself to producing a CD a year by the young player through 2008. And in the meantime he has been giving recitals and concerts-with-orchestra in many of the main cities of the world, Asian, European, North American.
All this amounts to lavish endorsement. Yet it was an unaffected, dignified, handsome and already celebrated young man who came onto the platform Friday to play Mozart, Schumann and Liszt for a packed hall. Needless to say, one expected a great deal. Not surprisingly, a certain amount of that great deal was forthcoming. But perhaps not all of it.
There could be no doubt that the most extreme challenges of his exacting program met their match in Li's technical prowess. His posture at the keyboard is at once alert and easy. He can summon enormous strength when he needs it, and exemplary serenity in contrast. His hand and finger skills are prompt, and his accuracy is phenomenal.
But when it came to his music-making, the heart and soul of it, I had some reservations.
It's not that there was anything crass or wanton in his Mozart -- the Sonata in C, K. 330. On the contrary, it was 'good boy' Mozart: neat, clear, gentlemanly and, somehow, a little passive. It was, in fact, just not very interesting.
Then came his Schumann, Carnaval, Op. 9, in which the composer exercises his own divided identity -- the bold Florestan and the shy Eusebius -- in the imaginative, epigrammatic delineation of a whole procession of characters and dances. Carnaval is one of the signal works of the Romantic piano literature: vivid, quirky, delicate, bold, amusing and touching by turns. Li attacked it with more spirit and imbued it with more variety than his Mozart, but his playing seemed to be displaying the music's pianistic wares rather than conjuring its magic.
The final piece on his program, Franz Liszt's Sonata in B Minor, is an epoch-making hybrid of sonata form and variation form, achieved through remarkable transformations, rhythmic and harmonic, of its basic themes. It is a pianistic Mount Everest in the hands of a mature Sviatoslav Richter or Alfred Brendel, but it can be quite a lot less fascinating, however impressive, in less mature and distinctive hands, however capable. And so it was Friday in Li's impressive and capable account, obviously practised to a high polish and admirable as piano playing, but somehow a feat, a performance of a performance, rather than a musical revelation.
Nevertheless, the audience erupted into bravos and into the sparkling lights of dozens of digital cameras which had been politely kept dormant during the playing.
Li smiled very calmly and sweetly and responded with a major encore: Chopin's Grande Polonaise in E-Flat, Op. 22, divested of its preceding Andante spianato. And when that didn't quite satisfy the fans' desire for more, he played a minor encore: a pretty little soufflé of a thing based on a popular Chinese tune.更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net