Seong-Jin Cho: Ravel & Liszt
Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh - 19/08/24
Seong-Jin Cho, piano.
Berlin-based but Seoul-born and raised piano virtuoso Seong-Jin Cho gave an exquisite exposition of the contrasting (but in some places, surprisingly overlapping) styles of Ravel and Liszt to a full Queen’s Hall as part of its EIF chamber series this morning.
Maurice Ravel’s Menuet antique (written in 1895, and then expanded for orchestra in 1929) was a suitable introduction to an absorbing recital. It overlays a pleasing variety of tunes, harmonies and rhythms over the traditional dance form in shifting A sections and then more definite B major. Cho captured its considered playfulness beautifully.
The twin influences of Romanticism and musical impressionism seep through every pore of the delightful three-moment Sonatine (1903-5) again with a menuet woven into its core. This is a piece which absorbed and charmed aspiring composer Michael Tippett early in his life, and it worked its spell again in Edinburgh this morning, serving as an appropriate bridge to Ravel’s delightful, eight-part Vaises nobles et sentimentales.
This suite of waltzes in the 1911 piano edition combines pleasurable lyricism and bursts of boisterousness with a languid, hazy, lazy afternoon feel. There are also modernist elements in the eclectic mix, signalled by the delicious dissonance of the opening bars; though these are rather more evident in the 1912 orchestral version. Cho handled the mood shifts, dynamic changes and often quick transitions with style and sensitivity.
Liszt made his entry after the interval, with the quiet and reflective opening to the middle set of his three definitive piano cycles. His Années de pèlerinage (second year: Italy) effectively created a musical bridge between the intricacies of Ravel and the more dramatic and bolstered sensibility of the Polish master at the height of his accomplishments.
Inspired overall by Goethe, but in this set passing though Italy’s artistic landscape via Petrarch’s poetry, Deuxième année: Italie features a pair of Liszt’s best-known tunes a little short of midway, before proceeding down various reflective paths towards its often-promised, multiply suspended, but finally intense and dramatic denouement.
Seong -Jin Cho, who performed sans score throughout, first bust onto the classical music scene by winning the International Chopin Piano Competition in 2015, aged just 21. His recordings so far have included works Handel, Schubert, Debussy, Mozart, Berg, Liszt, and of course Chopin. A Ravel disc must surely follow.
Already an international star, his two solo recitals at the EIF will now be followed by performances of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with the Kammerorchester Basel, under the direction of Julia Schröder. This was agreed at the last minute after intended soloist Hélène Grimaud fell ill. Despite the misfortune, this giant of a concerto is in more-than-capable hands.
Photo credit: Christoph Köstlin, Deutsche Grammophon.
