One of the most interesting events in each year's Festival is the afternoon concert given over to the year's RBC Stockey Young Artist. As Jim Campbell said before this afternoon's event, it's a much-needed opportunity to allow a young artist to appear before an audience made up of many interested, knowledgeable, and sophisticated music lovers -- precisely the sort of audiences they can expect to encounter more often if and as they pursue professional musical careers.
Since the program began twelve years ago, the participants have included different kinds of musicians from string quartets to last year's piano/cello duo, but the predominant "species" have been pianists. This raises interesting possibilities, since the majority of amateur musicians have had at least some training on the piano. Certainly, any piano recital at the Festival will draw a big audience of the interested, knowledgeable and sophisticated!
This year's RBC Stockey Young Artist, Annie Zhou, is a pianist. She decided to dedicate the entire programme of her hour-long recital to the music of Chopin. Since he was, without a doubt, the most iconic of all piano composers, and the one central to everybody's piano training, this is a decision guaranteed to draw the audience, but also to draw a crowd where everyone has their opinion about how the music should be played. A risky choice, to be sure.
To be completely clear, there is absolutely no doubt about Zhou's pianistic credentials. Even by the standards of the many wunderkinder who have crossed this stage previously, her technique was formidable to say the least -- and I could say a great deal more. When it comes to such well-known works as the Ballade No. 1 or the Sonata No. 3, any wrong notes will be glaringly obvious, but I heard none. Add to that searing accuracy her amazing control of individual fingers which allows her to highlight any voice within the music at her choosing, and it's obvious that she is a pianist to be reckoned with, in no uncertain terms.
However, in a situation not only common but totally normal considering her age (17), I found that the artistic interpretation of her programme was more convincing in some places than others. Again, to be quite clear, I have heard other pianists -- some older by a good margin -- who had bags of technique but no sense of the art of the music at all. Zhou is already clearly embarked on the discovery of the inner artist whose sensibility combines with the powerhouse technique to create real music. So with that in mind, here are some thoughts.
The difficulty can best be summed up by referring to the Italian term tempo rubato, which describes the practice of building in flexibility of tempo within a line or phrase. It's an absolute must to use it in the interpretation of Chopin, but how far should one go? Ask that question in a gathering of ten pianists and I guarantee you at least 12 answers, if not 20! When I think about it, though, I always recall an incident I've read about when Liszt played some of Chopin's music for Chopin. (Wouldn't that have been a great time to be a fly on the wall?) Chopin was definitely not pleased at Liszt's interpretive excesses, and angrily said, "Play my music as I wrote it or don't play it at all!" I've always taken that statement as a guide to keep the rubato within reasonably restrictive limits.
The opening Ballade No. 1, Op. 23, gives a great overview of the problem. The four Chopin Ballades are big works, using multiple themes and styles within a single piece, and following a kind of progressive or "narrative" construction in which the music always ends in quite a different style than the one in which bit started. Plainly, a piece of this discursive nature calls for much more flexibility of rubato than some other types (see below). I did feel, though, that Zhou made a little too free with Chopin's music -- especially in two spots where she took a short but clear silent pause within a single section that is certainly not indicated in the score.
No such qualms about the three succeeding Mazurkas, Op. 56. These triple-time dances are sadly neglected by many artists, perhaps because they are relatively short and some seem rather simple next to the bigger Chopin works, but I always enjoy hearing them and was pleased that Zhou decided to include them. This particular set was written late in Chopin's life, in 1844. In the first two of the set she kept to a much more regular tempo, with much slighter and subtler variations, entirely appropriate where the entire piece is short and all in one basic tempo and style. The third in C minor, which is more wayward and exploratory in its nature, she aptly treated with more freedom.
And so we came to the centrepiece, the great Sonata No. 3 in B Minor, Op. 68 -- also written in 1844. The restraint of Zhou's technique was most obvious when she did not overplay the march-like opening as many pianists are likely to do. Clear articulation at a mezzo-forte gave the music all the weight it needed. The scherzo flew by in an almost Mendelssohnian lightness of touch. Zhou found a lovely legato singing tone for the melodious third-movement largo.
For me, though, every performance of this Sonata stands or falls by the dramatic finale. It's a demonic moto perpetuo, in almost a tarantella rhythm, and strikes me as having a distinct family resemblance to the finale of Schubert's Sonata in C Minor, D.958. I wonder if Chopin was familiar with the Schubert work? That seems unlikely. And yet, this powerful movement -- unlike so many of Chopin's more sectional constructions -- basically rolls along nonstop from first to last in a single unbroken span of high-speed music, with an unending stream of triplets in the bass underpinning the structure. And that is pretty much a perfect description of the Schubert as well. The one exception is the march-like second theme, but even though the triplets are in abeyance the basic tempo doesn't really vary here.
This is music where any application of the rubato is likely to be fatal to the cumulative effect. At first Zhou avoided any sign of tempo modification. By the time she reached the third statement of the main theme, though, the rubato was beginning to slip in, although not to any great extent. Personally, I would have been happier if she had simply let the music roll on over all obstacles, as Chopin wrote it.
But that, as they say, is one person's opinion. And it's nitpicking to go after this or that detail. Plainly, Annie Zhou is an artist of great gifts and -- as I said before -- formidable technique and intelligence. As with many of the other Stockey Young Artists, I am especially intrigued by the idea that some time, twenty years or so down the road, I might hear this programme from her again, and compare notes with myself to see how her developing artistry has manifested itself after than passage of time.
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