New York Classical Review

Licad serves up revelatory Chopin in Key Pianists recital

Fri Dec 06, 2024 at 2:45 pm

By George Grella

Cecile Licad performed Thursday night at Weill Recital Hall in the Key Pianists series. Photo: Patrick Diokno

Pianist Cecile Licad presented one of her infrequent and welcome New York appearances Thursday night, with a recital program of Scriabin, Chopin, Joplin, Ravel, and more in Weill Recital Hall. Presented by the Key Pianists Concert Series, this was the kind of performance that was less about pianistic display than about ideas and meaning, something classical music needs much more of.

Licad is both an excellent pianist and an excellent musician. The pairing is of her chops at the keyboard, which are superb—although her technique Thursday was not as clean as is usual from her—and of her thinking, which is both logical and personal. Her playing Thursday night showed she had thought through every piece, every note, in detail. The result, channelled through her energy, was never less than fascinating. Not every idea was convincing, but there was always an idea with Licad’s stamp on it. And when everything worked, the results were impressive and even revelatory.

The first half was completely successful. Licad played Scriabin’s Two Impromptus, Op. 12 and the complete Op. 26 Preludes by Chopin. The Impromptus were the most coherent and meaningful one has heard. Scriabin’s writing is beguiling to pianists, but his sense of structural form is often less than the sum of his gestures and effects. Playing the slow B-flat one first then the Presto in F-sharp (in reverse order of their printing), Licad made these sound perfectly rational and sensible, connecting shorter phrases into a sense of a long line that flowed through each.

The Chopin Preludes were magnificent and indeed revelatory—it was stunning to hear such familiar music played in unfamiliar ways that sounded just right. Licad had tremendous independence between right and left hands, tempos pressed to the edge of their markings, and a skillful, ad libitum quality. The music sounded both more structurally transparent and expressively denser, not just miniature showpieces but concise and deep quasi-vocal pieces yearning to break into words.

That meant No. 5 had a marvelous playful quality, No. 6 was profoundly tragic, the rapid right hand and placid left hand bass of No. 10 were nearly at odds, which was exciting. No. 12 was not just intense, but Licad brought out a danceability in the music, and there was a wonderful Schumannesque spirit to No. 15 and others. This all sounded as much like impromptus as anything else, utterly surprising and satisfying in every moment.

The drawback of this brilliant approach to Chopin is that she applied it to six of Joplin’s Rags, and it was more of a collision than a meeting. A Chopinian plasticity in Joplin’s syncopations and sweet melodies was attractive moment to moment, but the push and pull in each phase meant Licad never built a consistent pulse through each rag—an essential feature of the music. Wall Street Rag, Leola and the others were stop-start, no feeling of stepping or loping, though Licad did manage to give them a complete shape. The exception was the Stoptime Rag, where the pianist stomps time with their foot and breaks in the rhythm are built in, that kept the dance possibilities in the music.

Amy Beach’s lovely, impressionistic, modernist Hermit Thrush at Eve No. 1 and Ernest Schelling’s Nocturne (Ragusa) were superb, the music seemed to flow out of Licad with poetry and mystery. Beach’s gorgeous piece is a nocturne itself, built around the thrush’s call, luminous against the chiaroscuro of Schelling’s gentle work. Licad is one of the few musicians dedicated to the American romantic piano literature, and this was excellent programming,

Last was Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso, music that, like Chopin, seemed to fit Licad perfectly. The thinking and playing were as fine as the Preludes, Licad underlining the shape and placement of each phrase without teetering into mannerism, the sound full of tense empty spaces and mystery in another superb interpretation.

Licad added two encores which were a direct continuation of the program, Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag and Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s Souvenirs d’Andalousie. With a much more regular pulse and the same effervescence, the rag was superb, the right balance of order and freedom. Licad knows Gottschalk probably better than any living pianist, and the showpiece was dazzling and tremendous fun, a triple exclamation point at the end of the evening.

Danny Driver plays Handel, Fauré, Schumann, Ligeti, and others, 7:30 p.m., March 13. terryeder.com