United Kingdom Beethoven, Rachmaninoff: Yuzhang Li (piano). Wigmore Hall, London, 21.2.2024. (MBr)
Beethoven – Sonata in A major, Op.101
Rachmaninoff – 10 Preludes, Op.23
This fine recital, given by the Chinese pianist Yuzhang Li, currently studying for a doctorate at the Royal Academy of Music in London, did prove one thing: Beethoven and Rachmaninoff need not make for an idiomatically difficult coupling if played well.
Beethoven’s Sonata in A major, Op.101 (No.28) can be a highly concentrated piece in places and yet its lyricism allows much room for dramatic scale. The bass voice of the piano is certainly a prominent one and ideally you want a pianist with a measure of its range to make this sonata sound rather more than just over-balanced. There was some highly articulate playing in the first movement here: gorgeous syncopated chords, a flush of harmony, rhythms that were on the right side of feverishness, a top E at the end that was finely done. Perhaps my only quibble here – and it would be one we would hear throughout the recital – was an edgy ring at the end of phrases; it just wasn’t as clean as it might have been.
There was some emphatic, even explosive, playing during the second movement. I think the rhythms were just about right: dotted to the point just before the beginning of the Trio, and the left and right hands overlapping with considerable precision. There was some impressive playing in the third movement, too. Ornamental when the music needed to be (perhaps a little surprising for late Beethoven piano sonatas), the more complex voices of the bass and upper treble beautifully done. The final movement had some judicious moments, not least in the Fugue section. Voices were good here, although some muddiness perhaps made the distinction between the alto and soprano bars less colourful than they might have been though the tenor subject was perfectly done.
Serge Rachmaninoff’s 10 Preludes Op.23 were composed between 1901 and 1903. Perhaps the finest of the set – certainly the most well-known – the No.5 in G minor is the earliest having been written in 1901 and it was this one that the composer himself premiered in Moscow in February 1903. There is, I think, nothing particularly uniform about the ten pieces; they vary in difficulty, they are different in their harmonic and lyrical sound. What they have in common is Rachmaninoff’s singular ‘Romantic’ voice. I am not sure I recognised this in Yuzhang Li’s playing of No.1 where the dark broodiness of the music, the entwining of lyricism that we get in the bass and tenor voices, came through enough. The B-flat No.2 was better where the broodiness of the music was this time captured in something like enough depth but perhaps this was because Li was much better at using her left hand in a much more expressive way; the bass was like dark chocolate, and with just the right amount of richness.
If the Maestoso tempo of the No.2 had been so close to ideal, I found the Tempo di minuetto of the D minor No.3 a bit too square. No.4 was sweetly lyrical and in No.5 Li seemed to look both backwards to Chopin and forward to the composer in a performance of it which dwelled on its militaristic rhythms but high Romantic lyricism. The E-flat No.6 had a warmth to it that matched the close Andante tempo Li managed to achieve: if this had been a sultry Moscow summer, it was one where the breeze just brushed softly against the skin.
No.7 and No.8 can be troubling Preludes for pianists, I think. The C minor can on occasions hardly sound like Rachmaninoff at all; the A-flat can almost become an essay. Li struggled to make an entirely convincing case for either. Too much literalism emerged in No.8 and too little of the composer came through in No.7. The E-flat minor No.9, which Rachmaninoff marks as Presto, seemed marginally on the pedestrian side – but there was no question the slightly slower tempo allowed Li to get much of the voices in the bass and treble spot on. The final Prelude maybe needs a different kind of playing altogether – it is neither a continuation of what has come before it, nor something that suggests what is to come after it. The Largo tempo was spot on – but if the music vanished into a kind of ethereal space of dissolution and magic – well, I am not quite so sure we really got close to that.
An impressive recital, nevertheless, that had much high-class pianism to enjoy.
Marc Bridle