New York Classical Review

Minyoung Rho, a superbly gifted pianist, introduced herself to New York audiences Monday night with an almost wholly successful recital in Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall. Although the event wasn’t billed as an “official” New York debut—whatever that means any more—it gave those lucky enough to be present a first look at a musician who has the technique, the ear, and the sensibility to develop into a major artist in the near future, if she’s not already there.

The piano, a 19^th-century contraption that continues to yield musical rewards into the 21st, has acquired a repertoire that both forges ahead and looks back to reflect on itself. It was the latter attribute that Rho emphasized in her selection of works for this program, alternating virtuosic pieces by Robert Schumann and Rachmaninoff with works of Lera Auerbach and Clifton Callender that alluded explicitly to past keyboard masters. Lucid and insightful program notes by the artist herself reinforced this message of a living tradition.

Auerbach’s Ludwigs Alptraum (Ludwig’s Nightmare), composed in 2007 for the International Beethoven Competition in Bonn, was a dark reflection on that composer’s two fantasy-sonatas of Op. 27, with allusions to both the placid opening bars of No. 1 in E-flat major and the fury of the “Moonlight” finale. 

In lesser hands, the piece might have come off as an undifferentiated mashup of quotations “modernized” with dissonance. Rho’s performance, however, explored tone colors from a chromatic blur to the characteristic (and usually avoided) buzzing sound a Steinway bass string makes when struck hard.

Elsewhere in the piece, Rho avoided the buzz in sonorous bass chords, produced with a flexible wrist and arm weight that showed the influence of the Russian school of tone production, heard in the playing of Vladimir Horowitz, Gary Graffman and Yuja Wang. (Synonyms for “sonorous” would be welcome here, since for most of the evening Rho was pulling concert-grand sound from Weill Hall’s medium-sized Steinway Model B.)

The character pieces of Schumann’s Kreisleriana fairly dripped with individual character, from the impetuous opener to the tender utterance that followed, its complex texture illuminated by lovely voicing and a natural, singer-like feeling for breathing and rubato. The pianist’s imagination was such that no theme ever returned without viewing it in a new light, related to what had gone before. The most intimate sentiments could change to a flash of assertion in the blink of an eye. Even the most turbulent passages were digitally clear and shaped. Through it all, the pianist remained still and poised on the bench, as all her energy went into tone production and phrasing, not gesticulation. 

Only the work’s closing movement eluded the pianist somewhat. Her rendering of the portrait of Kapellmeister Kreisler, the little old man with a hopping gait from whose imagination all the preceding fire and lyricism had sprung, didn’t quite capture the ironic humor and tenderness with which Schumann viewed his protagonist. It was a small disappointment at the end of a vibrant account of this Romantic masterpiece.

The phrase “à la manière de” (in the style of) has introduced tributes from one composer to another down through the ages. The Florida-based Clifton Callender made it the title of a set of six preludes, completed in 2018 and each dedicated to a past great of the piano. Schumann was not on that list, but there was a Kreisleriana-like feel overall to this suite, with its volatile emotions and eagerness to transcend its models.

In “Chopin,” Callender turned the near-atonal mutterings of a prelude and a sonata finale by that composer into a roar of piano sonority. “Bach” took a two-voice canon to the extreme ends of the keyboard. Rho stiffened her wrist for a more Bartók-like tone in “Langetiessen,” celebrating the harmonic and rhythmic advances made by contemporary composers David Lang, Louis Andriessen and György Ligeti.

“Tatum” recalled the gentle swing and digital pyrotechnics of jazz pianist Art Tatum. Orchestral music of Ruth Crawford Seeger inspired the layered piano colors of “Crawford.” Fast, high repeated notes over broad arpeggiated chords wove a rich tapestry of piano sound in “Liszt,” whose powerful close on a tolling low note brought the suite back around to Chopin and the similar ending of his D minor Prelude.

The colors and depth of Rho’s playing to this point were such that even her quite adequate rendering of Rachmaninoff’s Sonata No. 2 in B-flat major (in the tightened-up 1931 version) seemed a little flat by comparison. Voicing wasn’t as lucid as before, and the melodies didn’t sing as much. The sweep of Rachmaninoff’s line was lost in the flurry of notes. 

In character and expressive ambition, this sonata is a Rachmaninoff concerto for piano without orchestra—or rather, for piano as both soloist and orchestra. It may be that the task of meeting the work’s massive technical demands left little room for cultivating Rho’s other virtues. Also, the instrument’s modest dimensions—a full two feet shorter than a concert-size Model D—may have finally caught up with this resourceful pianist, limiting the scope and scale of what she or anyone could have achieved with this piece.

Rho did not bring an encore to this recital, a rookie mistake. Audiences expect encores, and these short pieces are a good way to bring the listener gently down from a peak of excitement–or, on an evening like this, to leave a good impression even if the expedition didn’t quite make it to the summit.