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Dazzling Piano and Superb Symphony New York
Wu Tsai Theater, David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center
11/27/2024 - & November 29, 30*, December 1, 2024
Dai Fujikura: Entwine
Frédéric Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 2 in E Minor, Opus 21
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Symphony No. 2 in E Minor, Opus 27
Yunchan Lim (Pianist)
New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Kazuki Yamada (Conductor)
K. Yamada (© Jean-Charles Vinaj/Monte Carlo Symphony Orchestra)
“The ‘Concerto In E Minor’ is for the most part a series of rambling passages, with one or two pretty motivi, which but little is done.”
London Times, 1855
“I was glad to be once again among a thorough genius, not one of those half‑virtuosos, half‑classics who would like to combine in music the honors of virtues and the pleasures of vice.”
Felix Mendelssohn
The ultimate test for music professors, pedants, pedagogues, critics and reviewers is not Stockhausen or Boulez or a Bach cello suits or an Ives‑or‑Beethoven string quartet. That test should be (in my humble opinion) the third movement of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony.
“What??” queries the all-too-clever listener. “That antediluvian, syrupy clarinet tune, those uninspired moments rescued by Gabrielli‑style brass fanfares?”
Adjectives are cheap. But sitting last night in Carnegie Hall, my mind deleted thoughts, words, scribbled notes. I just listened without barriers. And no, this work, written the same year as Schoenberg’s First String Quartet, was what an all too rare uncerebral and unalloyed ecstasy.
The New York Philharmonic last night had the fine Kazuki Yamada as conductor. And part of his success with the Symphony was that he let the music play out by itself. For it needed no idiosyncrasies, no retardation for the melodies (they sung for themselves, the Phil strings as lustrous as possible).
Mr. Yamada can be physical whenever necessary. But here the music made him a conducting minimalist. That first movement started with menace, but bloomed into an exciting mixture of blazing colors. The scherzo was never free‑wheeling. Instead it started with four horns plunged into the movement and into an almost bucolic mid‑section.
Then it all stopped for the Adagio, as Anthony McGill introduced a melody enthralling by itself. But which led to those moments when the ignorant closed their programs, when the reviewers put down their pens, and allowed the sounds of the Phil to sweep over their learnéd heads. The finale had recapitulations of previous themes, hints of the composer’s favorite Dies Iræ, and finished with a full‑bodied climax
Y. Lim (© Van Cliburn Competition)
True, most olf the audience came to see the 20-year-old Seoul‑born pianist Yunchan Lim, and they were hardly disappointed. Two years ago, the youngest Gold Prize winner of the Van Cliburn competition, Mr. Lim has gone from strength to strength (not exactly the right word, but wait for it), playing recitals and as performer with virtually every orchestra.
Even recording that apex of virtuosity, the Liszt Transcendental Etudes.
When using the word “strength”, I was not comparing him to Trifonov or Ax. Rather, in the Chopin Second Concerto, Mr. Lim exercised an initial rainbow of colors, starting with a bang-of-an-opening and continuing where each measure had a different hue.
Yet there was more, much more. Specifically a fluid, almost glissando mastery of the keyboard runs. Add to this an Allegro vivace of Polish dances that had a real joy.
For the encore, he played an unexpected Bach Suite movement, with fluidity that would have astonished the composer with his primitive keyboard.
Due to a ticket mix up, I was seated without time for even a glance at the notes for the opening Entwine by Dai Fujikura. Still, this five‑minute piece was a gem of clarity. The first woodwind notes, transferred to strings and winds and mild percussion and back again. This was hardly an orchestra concerto. Rather (as I learned later) it was written during the Covid pandemic. And Entwine was not written as a dirge, but a recognition that in the worst of times, Humanity must come together. We must entwine feelings and emotions and sounds.
Mr. Fujikura’s message and music became both beguiling and comforting enough to preface an extraordinary evening.
Harry Rolnick
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