Haochen Zhang: Gold Medalist = STRAVINSKY: Three Movements from Petrouchka; CHOPIN: 24 Preludes, Op. 28; BATES: White Lies fro Lomax; LISZT: Spanish Rhapsody – Haochen Zhang, piano – Harmonia mundi

by | Dec 29, 2009 | Classical CD Reviews | 0 comments

Haochen Zhang: Gold Medalist = STRAVINSKY: Three Movements from Petrouchka; CHOPIN: 24 Preludes, Op. 28; BATES: White Lies fro Lomax; LISZT: Spanish Rhapsody – Haochen Zhang, piano – Harmonia mundi HMU 907506, 72:11 ****:


I heard Van Cliburn Gold Medalist Haochen Zhang (b. 1990) at the McAfee Center, Saratoga on October 11, where he repeated much of his award-winning program on this disc, taped 22 May-7 June 2009 at Bass Performance Hall, Fort Worth, Texas.  Besides possessing an astonishing technique, Mr. Zhang projects a maturity of conception in music-making rare in such a youthful prodigy. Despite the monstrous flurry of notes he casts at us, the internal logic of the music remains securely intact, and the poetry never suffers his distinctive virtuosity.

Zhang open with the percussive and blazing Three Movements from Petrouchka, Stravinsky’s dancing homage to both Diaghilev and Artur Rubinstein, who unfortunately never recorded the piece. If the Russian Dance startles us with emblazoned bold chords, the middle section, In Petrouchka’s Room, provides a meditative colorful interlude, despite its macabre sonorities and sudden outbursts. The whirling kaleidoscopic Shrovetide Fair pulsates, throbs, and explodes in a veritable whirlpool of colors, songful yet vibrant with an irreverent pageantry that consumes the entire keyboard. Here is a young performer whose Stravinsky invites comparison with renditions by Bachauer and Magaloff.


The Chopin Op. 28 Preludes bestow upon us a Rosetta Stone for the Romantic ethos: no "prelude" conforms to any fixed standard, as they assume the character of mazurkas, abbreviated sonata-movements, nocturnes, etudes, or some alchemical combination thereof. Each of them basks in Chopin’s idiosyncratic rhythm, sings as a vocalized instrumental expression, and enjoys the composer’s immaculate skill at ornamentation. Zhang approaches each of the twenty-four – as they traverse the circle of fifths – as a hurdle to be overcome while maintaining the string of pearls that connects them to one another. The symmetric C Major yields to the asymmetrical A Minor, only to renew the journey on G and make an ineluctable progression to D Minor. The E Minor hints at tragedy; the A Major diaphanously graces the air and disappears. Zhang’s leggierissimo D Major proves as fastidious as his granite octaves in the furious B-flat Minor. The No. 18 in E-flat harkens to Schumann, while the C Minor No. 20 brings sad carillons from an abbreviated ballade. The E Major might be a grim sojourn to Calvary, and its wicked trill a death knell. In the final group of four, the F Major rings with limpid figures, only to plunge into the abyss at cycle‘s end.

Mason Bates (b. 1977) composed White Lies for Lomax for a commission from the Tanglewood Music Center in 2007. A bluesy fragmented piece, the music pays homage to Alan Lomax, an ethnomusicologist who journeyed to the American South to record black folk music, much in the same way that Bartok and Kodaly had conducted their early Hungarian studies. Scale patterns and harp-like riffs yield to more choppy figures, Hoagy Carmichael or Keith Jarrett strutting on the ivories. If the piece has a Gershwinesque sound, it has none of his melodic gift. Still, as a kind of eccentric etude it retains a certain value, at least insofar as Zhang may be said to be a proselytizer of  “new music.”

Liszt’s 1863 Spanish Rhapsody releases once more the firebrand in Zhang’s persona: a series of variants on the Follies d’Espagne, the solemn chaconne breaks into a delicious jota aragonesa rife with Liszt’s patented wizardry in runs and flying octaves. Zhang applies a deliciously savage energy to this piece, an orchestral brush in marvelously huge strokes, much to the unbounded glee of the Cliburn Competition audience, who couldn’t wait to crown their newly elected king.

–Gary Lemco

 

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