YUNDI plays Chopin ... unfourtunately.
YUNDI plays Chopin
Jean-Marie Zeitouni, conductor
YUNDI, piano
Thursday, June 10, 2010 8:00 PM
Roy Thomson Hall

Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Minor, Op. 11
Bruckner: Symphony No. 9 in D Minor


Bonus twofer in this review !


Stravinsky: Petrouchka
Carlos Miguel Prieto, conductor
Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, violin
Thursday, May 27, 2010 8:00 PM
Roy Thomson Hall

Falla: Suite No. 2 from The Three-Cornered Hat
Piazzolla: /arr. Desyatnikov: The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires
Stravinsky: Petrouchka

A new experience to report ... a concert that actually made me angry.

Not right of the bat, and not-flat out ... it was a vague anger, hanging around the back of the mind, waiting for solitude to expose itself ... yet even in company, its dark presence sucked at the mind, leading to giving bad driving directions to one of my co-attendees after the show (sorry about that).

And the main target ... Yundi Li ... oh sorry, he's recently decided he's so great that he only needs one name, YUNDI.

Pretentious.

Which wouldn't be so bad if he could play.

Well, he can play ... if all you care about is technique (there were many moments where I could only be amazed by the speed, eveness and accuracy of his execution). However, combining an ability to interpret or communicate passion through music is a big part of playing, and alll yUNDi did was play notes in the right order, cleanly and with no soul I could hear.

There was a little more soul to his encore, some waltzy thing by Chopin ...

Yeah, I'm not even going to go to the bother of remembering what piece the encore was. It was a throwaway salon piece by Chopin as far as I'm concerned, not one of his finer crafted or interesting pieces. I could have done with one of his Nocturnes or Preludes at that point in the show; maybe in one of those yunDI would have shown more depth of performance to go along with those fast fingers. Or one of the Etudes ... where he could just really show off some chops.

If I woke up one day and found when I sat at my piano that I suddenly had Yundi's technical chops, due to some deal with some supernatural entity or some form of helpful brain damage, I'd want to turn things back to be a non-technical fumblefingers instead of the perfect robot I heard on stage.

Yundi ... take back the last name, and go find some repertoire you love, play that, and let the audience hear you love it. Not that that matters, since a huge number of people misguidedly seem to hang to your every note and pay for your every album.

Backtrack time ... I'll go back a few paragraphs and take things in an alternate direction to get away from talking about yundi and focusing on the more important people involved, sadly posthumously, in the concert ... the composers.

Yeah, I'm not even going to go to the bother of remembering what piece the encore was. It was a throwaway salon piece by Chopin as far as I'm concerned, not one of his finer crafted or interesting pieces. I could have done with one of his Nocturnes or Preludes at that point in the show; and that's because the 1st Concerto is not, as far as I'm concerned, anywhere near Chopin's finest work. The orchestral opening really sets the mood ... it sounds murky, it sounds like it wasn't really written for the orchestra (When the same material is later heard on the piano, it sounds much better), and it doesn't even sound like Chopin. The work is discursive ... wandering discursive, unfocused discursive, like the composer was just stringing tunes together discursive.

Frankly, this concerto is everything I loathe about the typical composer's approach to the concerto: it's just a vehicle for the soloist to show off. The orchestra in this particular piece is pretty much just a backdrop for the piano and gave the fine TSO nothing much at all to do. I can only contrast this with a recent performance of Desyatnikov’s arrangement of works by Astor Piazolla, The 4 Seasons of Buenos Aires, where soloist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg interacted with the orchestra and conductor magnificently. This piece itself balanced the soloist with the ensemble, and gave the ensemble a meaty and fascinating place in the musical fabric. In the Chopin concerto, the focus was merely on the soloist and the material was thin; in the Piazolla, everyone had a role, the material was rich, and the work allowed all the performers to shine.

Another backtrack and change of direction ... the orchestral opening really sets the mood ... it sounds murky, it sounds like it wasn't really written for the orchestra (When the same material is later heard on the piano, it sounds much better), and it doesn't even sound like Chopin. The work is discursive ... wandering discursive, unfocused discursive, like the composer was just stringing tunes together discursive ... not Bruckner discursive.

Not that discursive is really the right word for Bruckner in my mind: discursive usually has a negative connotation. Spacious, luxuriously paced, expansive, wide ranging ... those are more the words I'd use.

The guest conductor, Jean-Marie Zeitouni, stepped in to conduct this show on short notice. As I said earlier, combining an ability to interpret or communicate passion through music is a big part of playing ... and Zeitouni and the TSO PLAYED Anton Bruckner's 9th Symphony. In this case, the first movement of the symphony opened at a quicker tempo than I've heard it before, and the tempo gave the work a visceral character and a bit of a rhythmic snap a bit different than other performances; different, and successful. The second movement, the scherzo, also benefited from this muscular approach. The last movement ... this has some of my favourite Bruckner moments, and the playing and direction did not disappoint.

Then, it was time to leave, after the final quiet rich sounds of the Bruckner ... and on the way out of Roy Thomson Hall there was a hugely long line to navigate past, a line of those wanting to get autographs of the great Yundi ... I could comment further, but the comments would add too much blue to my site (which is already blue, in the literal sense), and would get a bit ... racy. Anyone out there who wants to hear the rest ... I'd say use the contact link on the site but it doesn't work right now. HAHAHAHAHAHAH. You will all remain in suspense!

I'm still angry. That concert cost a fair bit to go to and the first half was sure some bad. Yundi's on my list, and so is this show's audience. For all that my list is worth that is.

PS … This is a two-fer review, as the header shows. Just don’t have much to say about the May 27th show … which was great. Petrouchka rocks.

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