WASHINGTON, October 26, 2011 – The Young Concert Artists series brought its latest musical phenom to the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater this week, presenting young pianist George Li in recital. And young is the operant word, here. Li is just 16 years old but he’s already been performing in public for years, even appearing with the prestigious Cleveland Orchestra, which never takes any chances when hiring a soloist.
Li carried with him an industrial strength program as one generally expects when a youthful pianist wants to make a splashy debut. Splashy it was, too, loaded down with killer Liszt, not to mention Beethoven’s appallingly difficult “Appassionata” Sonata.
In the main, Li acquitted himself quite well, already possessing a marvelous command of tempo and phrasing. But a brilliant 16-year old is not necessarily a completely finished 16-year old. Bel canto, melodic lines were at times buried under the accompanying cascades of notes, and pedaling was more often overdone than not.
Time and practice, however, will certainly solve these issues in a few short years, so not to worry.
Li opened his program in a somewhat unorthodox fashion by performing Carl Czerny’s “Variations” on a theme from Pierre Rode’s “La Ricordanza.” Rode was a famous violinist and sometime composer while Czerny was for a time a piano student of Salieri, Beethoven, and Clementi. Very early in his life, Czerny won considerable fame as a pianist, actually performing as soloist in the Vienna premiere of Beethoven’s Fifth (“Emperor”) piano concerto.
Young pianist George Li. (Credit: Christian Steiner.)
But Czerny decided to turn to teaching and composing full time—a good choice it seems as he was very much in demand in spite of the high fees he charged for lessons. Of his hundreds of compositions, we encounter only a few these days, with the exception of his piano methods, “The School of Velocity” and “The Art of Finger Dexterity” which include “Etudes” (“Studies”) of varying lengths and difficulty that even 21st century music students still encounter.
Czerny’s own students included royalty as well as many serious young musicians. It’s worth pointing out that he was Franz Liszt’s only real teacher—perhaps inspiring George Li to include him in this recital.
Czerny’s “Variations” are highly clever and original and span the gamut from the modest to the extraordinarily difficult. All were handled with aplomb by the young pianist in a most refreshing introduction to his own technical skills.
Next on the program a curious choice, Arnold Schönberg’s “Sechs Kleine Klavierstücke,” Op. 19. These incredibly short, gnomic, aimless little pieces are illustrative of the composer’s evolving serial or atonal phase but contained little of interest internally, although Li performed them thoughtfully. Perhaps a selection of Bartòk’s equally short but more interesting piano gems would have provided more complexity. But then again, sometimes rarely heard offbeat nuggets from a still fairly unpopular composer are a way of staking out some future musical turf.
The Czerny and the Schönberg proved to be warmups, though, for the first half’s main event, Beethoven’s “Appassionata” Sonata, Op. 27, No. 23. It was a bang-up way to get his program to intermission and he dashed into this difficult piece with a bravado that even the composer might have grudgingly admired.
Li’s performance highlighted both strengths—a mastery of passagework, a fearless attack—and weaknesses—the aforementioned pedaling issues plus the occasional buried melody line when it fell into the tenor or baritone range. But he also dropped very few notes, the bane of the old romantic pianists of the 20th century, and knew where he was going all the time.
After intermission, Li launched into two Spanish-tinged selections from Maurice Ravel’s moody “Miroirs,” that both changed the pace and cleansed the palate for the Liszt onslaught that was to follow. Li’s Ravel was appropriately moody and exotic. And here, oddly, his pedaling technique served him in good stead as a bit of judicious blurring here and there generally enhances the mystery and intensity of impressionistic pieces.
Li’s Liszt selections were all familiar ones to most fans of classical piano, namely two elaborate concert etudes—perhaps inspired by Czerny’s early work in the genre—entitled “Waldesrauschen” (roughly, “Forest Rustlings,” or perhaps, “The Winds in the Forest”) and “Gnomenreigen” (“Dancing Gnomes”). The former is classic romantic Liszt while the latter is classic puckish Liszt. Taken together and performed by Li with great enthusiasm, they’re both classic, tuneful opportunities for a pianist to strut his effortless technique, which Li most certainly did.
Softening the mood for a moment, Li next performed Liszt’s justly famous, melancholic “Consolation” No. 3, a flowing, pensive piece still beloved by fans of Romantic piano music. The piece calls for a lighter, more delicate approach, which Li provided, almost as if to prove he’s not just another barnstorming pianist. But it was a lovely choice, and Li took advantage of the mood to provide a thoughtful meditation on Liszt’s more metaphysical side.
But the Consolation is no way to conclude a Washington debut concert which Li perfectly well understood, offering Liszt’s boisterous and ridiculously well-known Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 for his crashing finale. Everybody in the world has run into this piece, even if they’re mostly into heavy metal, particularly its antic, nose-thumbing final theme—also a great favorite for cartoon “chase scenes” in the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s.
Li did what you need to do with this classic, impersonating Franz Liszt with all the bravura, bravado, and show off moves that were written into this piece anyway. Again, there was a dropped note here, a missing baritone line there, but all in all, it was really a fantastic performance of this work, fresh, exciting, and, well, damn good fun to watch, too. It brought down the house as well it should.
The audience demanded more—what else could an audience do? And Li responded with three encores: a lovely, understated performance of the Bach-Siloti Prelude in B minor; a crashing, fun-filled “La Campanella” (the third of Liszt’s six etudes after Paganini); and an incredibly thoughtful, insightful performance of Chopin’s C# minor Nocturne (Op. Posthumous).
Apparently written early in the composer’s life but never published, the C# minor Nocturne is a work of extraordinary melancholy and intense feeling as well as Chopin’s preference for bel canto voicing in the piano. Here, young George Li connected somehow with the composer’s complex spirit, expressing this Nocturne with a sensitive bel canto tenor and exquisitely delicate pedaling that—even more profoundly than his spectacular Lisztomania—provided genuine insight into the future-world where his soon-to-be brilliant career seems destined to transport him.
Rating: *** ½ (Three and one-half stars out of four.)
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