EGN NEWS DESK
At 28, Jan Lisiecki can definitely be referred to as a younger musician. But of the pianists making recital debuts at Carnegie Hall just lately, he’s one thing of an elder statesman.
Last month, Yunchan Lim, then nonetheless in his teenagers, confidently pressed by means of the challenges of Chopin’s études. And on Tuesday, Alexander Malofeev, 22, was an unruffled information by means of the richness of Russian late Romanticism and its afterglow.
Both Lim and Malofeev have been showing at Carnegie for the primary time, however Lisiecki has been an occasional presence with orchestras there since 2016. While the primary corridor’s scale might be daunting for a solo recitalist, with nearly 3,000 folks watching, on March 13 he appeared calmly at dwelling from the beginning.
The second half of Lisiecki’s program was given over to Chopin’s 24 Preludes (Op. 28), whereas earlier than intermission got here an assortment of different brief items in that style: a sort of prelude fabricated from preludes. This was a canny combination of chestnuts and rarities. Lisiecki mixed the simply recognizable likes of Bach’s Prelude in C (the opening of “The Well-Tempered Clavier”) and Rachmaninoff’s in C sharp minor (Op. 3, No. 2) with a lot much less frequent alternatives from units of preludes by Szymanowski, Messiaen and Gorecki.
Lisiecki performs with light judiciousness, aristocratic reserve and a contact that tends shadowy with out shedding a core of readability. He clearly relishes gentle taking part in, with delicate results of distant bells and moonlit drizzles in Messiaen’s “La Colombe” and “Le Nombre Léger,” and a murmured sotto voce in Chopin’s Op. 28, No. 15.
His recordings of Chopin’s études and nocturnes provide beautiful, usually introverted, smoothed, even sleepy takes on these works. But in an interview when the nocturnes have been launched, Lisiecki stated that the album’s gradual tempos wouldn’t work in live performance.
And in individual, he got here throughout as a livelier musician than he does on report, gunning the vivace that Chopin signifies for the third Op. 28 Prelude into one thing nearer to vivacissimo, and gamely rising to the pounding storms of Gorecki and Rachmaninoff.
But it’s in poetic wistfulness that Lisiecki shines. The spotlight of this system was Chopin’s Prelude in C sharp minor (Op. 45), written a couple of years after the Op. 28 set and right here refined and eloquent, with Lisiecki’s rubato giving the heart beat an understated ebb and circulate, for a portrait of quiet, lonely looking.
Unlike Lisiecki and Lim, Malofeev performed in Carnegie’s smaller Zankel Hall. This was a sensible method to introduce him to a New York viewers, particularly since he doesn’t but have the backing of a significant report label. (Those different pianists are each Decca artists.)
Born in Moscow and primarily based in Berlin, Malofeev got here to prominence for not performing. Just after the Russian invasion of Ukraine two years in the past, a presenter in Vancouver canceled his look, and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra adopted swimsuit, even after Malofeev — who lacked any ties to the battle to start with — had launched a press release calling the invasion a “horrible and bloody choice.”
His profession doesn’t appear to have been derailed by the episode — fortunately, since he’s an admirable artist. Like Lisiecki, he provided a mixture of the acquainted and never. Alongside Rachmaninoff favorites within the second half of his live performance, he included works that had by no means been performed at Carnegie: Scriabin’s Two Impromptus (Op. 12) and Medtner’s “Sonata-Reminiscenza” in A minor.
The opening of a cycle referred to as “Forgotten Melodies,” the Medtner was a deal with, a fantasia on nostalgia during which a reminiscence of childlike songfulness is handed by means of 14 minutes of various colours and textures. In different fingers, the piece might need expanded to extra grandeur, however Malofeev stored it superbly intimate.
The textures have been extra roiled than wealthy within the first piece on this system, Samuil Feinberg’s transcription of Bach’s Organ Concerto in A minor (BWV 593). But Malofeev’s Scriabin — these impromptus, in addition to the Prelude and Nocturne for the Left Hand (Op. 9) — was relaxed and suave.
He excels in Rachmaninoff, with appreciable energy but a lightweight, even witty contact. The Sonata No. 2 in B flat minor (in its revised, condensed model) was versatile however didn’t lose a way of construction and intention. The faintest pinprick of a excessive observe close to the tip of the primary motion; the refined gracefulness of a late melody within the second; the steadiness of sternness and glitter within the finale — all was impressively assured.
He and Lisiecki each performed Rachmaninoff’s Op. 3, No. 2 prelude, however have been intriguingly distinct in it. Lisiecki made the piece gravely granitic, whereas Malofeev rendered it extra offhand and dreamlike.
In a great way, although, these two pianists are extra alike than completely different, each with a method that’s basically calm and modest, by no means showy even at their most virtuosic.
