Opening this concert with the Bartok was a good idea. I like to think that an audience has the most chance of giving their full attention to the first piece in an evening’s program. (It should be noted, however, that this flies against a lot of musical tradition – after all, the overture for an opera is, apart from quite a few other legitimate uses, used as a way to shut the audience up, so one can’t imagine that an audience would therefore give it their full attention. But in this far more polite concert-going society that we live in now, I think there’s less need for it.) And if any piece needed one’s full attention, it’s a piano work by Bartok. To say that there’s many people who like Bartok, and many people who don’t, is to utter a phrase so obviously true that you may wonder what the point of even saying it was, but Bartok has a tendency to polarise. And there’s no use sticking something polarising at the end of the concert, when we’ve had our fill of easier pleasures. Pleasures are sweeter when they come after work, after all.
I’m still undecided on Bartok, which perhaps is a testament to his longevity as a composer, in that his pieces remain somewhat challenging to us even now. Yet this particular experience of mine with the man, transmuted through the lens of pianist Joyce Yang’s performance – she sitting in the middle of the stage at the City Recital Hall, atop the stool in front of the black Steinway, the concert the first in the International Pianists in Recital series of the Sydney Symphony for this year – was a rather worthwhile one.
The piece in question was Out of Doors – Suite, Sz.81. In it there are five movements, all given specific names (such as ‘With Drums and Pipes (Pesante)’ and ‘The Night’s Music (Lento – Un poco piu andante)’, which, as the program tells us, ‘makes it almost unique in his output’, given that he usually gave his pieces only generic names. It begins with the piano being used almost as a percussive instrument, and navigates through a variety of moods before ending in a frantic chase. Yang did well with the piece, keeping the tension – which can so often slacken in pieces such as this where the music has many gaps – high, and the details exact. Schumann’s Fantasiestucke (Fantasy Pieces), Op.12 came next, and provided a welcome contrast to the pseudo-challenge of the Bartok. Here, with movements such as ‘Aufschwung (Soaring)’ and ‘Traumes-Wirren (Dream’s Confusion)’ we had much more fluidity from Yang, with a very pleasing lightness to her arpeggios, and a lovely fluidity.
After the interval came Rachmaninoff, and some more Rachmaninoff. The first, a selection of three songs arranged by Earl Wild (Dreams, Op.38, No.5, The Little Island, Op.14 No.5, and Vocalise, Op.34 No.14), was, at the beginning, an exercise in mere pleasantry, but once the third – and most famous – song came upon the ivories, one was entranced by the sheer beauty of it.
Rachmaninoff’s Sonata No.2 in B flat minor, Op.36 (1931 revision) finished the concert, and here yet again Yang proved herself to be very adept at the quieter moments as she found her way through the all the notes. Indeed, Yang has an ability to make you almost forget that there are pyrotechnics involved in many of these pieces, such is her style. Not that this was a program that was heavily weighted towards overt virtuosity – no devilish Liszt pieces, for instance – but there was call for plenty of it, and it came with a rare humility, I found. Indeed, the whole concert had quite a special and somewhat serene atmosphere to it, with a rapt audience throughout (coughs per minute being well below the average).
An encore was demanded, and an encore was gladly given, Yang stating that the Rachmaninoff sonata wasn’t the ‘best piece to go home and sleep after’. The piece was a Liszt arrangement of a Chopin work, entitle ‘My Joys’, and it was a joy indeed. One of the best piano recitals of the last couple of years.
Rating: 4 ½ stars out of 5
Joyce Yang in Recital
Sydney Symphony
Joyce Yang (piano)
Bela Bartok – Out of Doors – Suite, Sz.81
Robert Schumann – Fantasiestucke (Fantasy Pieces), Op.12
Sergei Rachmaninoff, arranged by Earl Wild – Dreams, Op.38 No.5; The Little Island, Op.14 No.5; Vocalise, Op.34 No.14
Sergei Rachmaninoff, Sonata No.2 in B flat minor, Op.36 (1931 revision)
City Recital Hall, Angel Place, Sydney
18 March
