Pianist Liu goes small and big in Russian works at Carnegie

Sat Jan 25, 2025 at 1:35 pm
Pianist Bruce Liu performed Friday night at Carnegie Hall. Photo: Bartek Barczyk

Despite its cyclical title, Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons was not conceived as a piano cycle à la Kreisleriana or Pictures at an Exhibition, so there was no reason not to do what Bruce Liu did in his recital Friday night in Carnegie Hall, which was to play six of the little pieces on the program’s first half and six on the second, interspersed with other works.

Liu’s imaginative program design was matched by poetic playing in Tchaikovsky’s miniatures and fiery and sonorous renderings of Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No. 4 and Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 7.

Competition wins don’t always translate to prominent careers, but since taking first prize at the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 2021, the Canadian pianist’s life has been a whirl of appearances in music’s most hallowed venues. Although Friday’s Carnegie program focused on landmarks of the piano repertoire, Liu’s first studio album, released last year, offered a more venturesome selection of music by Rameau, Ravel, Alkan, and Satie.

Actually, programming The Seasons whole rather than in excerpts could be considered rather daring in itself. Writing to order for a music magazine that intended to publish one piece each month by the famous composer, Tchaikovsky was content to follow the scheme, and even the titles, that the publisher proposed. (“The Months” might have been a more accurate name for this collection, but apparently the Vivaldian title proved irresistible.)  Making these disconnected vignettes hang together in performance is a challenge that Liu partly dodged on Friday by dividing the work.

While it’s not designed and paced like a Schumann cycle, The Seasons does open in a Schumannesque cozy mood with its January entry, “At the Fireside,” in which Liu indulged his predilection for generous rubato and fine shadings of tone in the piano-to-pianissimo range. In contrast, the hurly-burly and dissonances of “Carnival” seemed to point ahead to the Shrovetide Fair music in Stravinsky’s Petrushka. The delicately rendered “Song of the Lark” evoked a melancholy Russian mood, in which even the bird’s animated song brought a pang of nostalgia.

Writing music for magazine readers to play at home, Tchaikovsky did slip into salon style now and then, as in the graceful waltz of “Snowdrop” and the genteel eroticism of “May Nights”—both of which were elevated on Friday by Liu’s poetic phrasing. “Barcarolle” needed no rescuing, however, as Liu sang out the distinctive gondolier’s song, fluid counterpoint, and a sudden burst of passion in the middle.

Liu had planned to use Rachmaninoff’s transcription of the Scherzo from Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a bridge from small Tchaikovsky to big Scriabin. The last-minute substitute was Earl Wild’s transcription of the “Dance of the Four Swans” from Swan Lake. Typically performed as a “three-hands” dazzler, in Liu’s hands Wild’s piece floated as weightlessly as the young swans themselves, sounding more like another Seasons miniature than a flashy encore.

The sensuous opening Andante of Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No. 4 was made to order for Liu’s tempo-flexing style, as the pianist twined melodic lines through soft arpeggios. Staccato and legato touches mixed bewitchingly in the Prestissimo volando movement; the composer’s erotic-mystical vision was realized in sonorous chords, ghostly octaves, and a final climax of throbbing chords. Tchaikovsky’s domestic contentments seemed a world away.

But after an intermission to catch one’s breath, there Tchaikovsky was again, channeling Schumann’s happy farmer in the hearty tune of July’s “Reaper’s Song.” Liu took a more extroverted approach to the next two pieces as well: “Harvest,” the most Schumann-like piece in the set, dazzled the ear with fast chordal writing and constantly shifting meters before retreating to a thoughtful middle section. And listening to Liu launch “The Hunt,” it wasn’t hard to imagine a full Tchaikovsky orchestra and a stage full of bounding male dancers.

The florid melody, delicate counterpoint, and chromatic harmonies of “Autumn Song” evoked a Chopin-like melancholy. With a catchy tune that seemed plucked from The Nutcracker and accompaniments that sparkled like fresh snow, “Troika” survived even Liu’s constant tempo fluctuations. “Christmas” began as a light scamper, then blossomed into dream-like snatches of a waltz—an appropriate conclusion to Tchaikovsky’s “insubstantial pageant.”

Liu then jumped with both feet into the all-too-concrete world of Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 7, its opening Allegro inquieto movement bristling with acerbic phrases and a stomping march before he shifted to his most misty tone for the loose-limbed second theme. The pianist’s wide tonal palette made possible the layered textures that gave depth to this and subsequent movements, even the precipitous finale.

Melodious long lines characterized the second movement, but this Andante caloroso got its calories from skillful pedaling that built a sonorous climax without speeding up the Andante tempo. A tolling two-note figure closed the movement in a mournful mood.

The finale, marked Precipitato, presented a paradox of iron control and constant stumbling over its truncated 7/8 meter. Liu chose just the right fast-but-not-too-fast tempo to convey that unstable feeling while driving the movement in a single long crescendo, overcoming obstacles and “panicky” moments along the way, to the pounding chords of the sudden finish.

Of course the audience stood and cheered this muscular tour de force by the previously poetic pianist, which led to four encores, including a lucid and songful Fantaisie-Impromptu by Chopin and a rather precipitato rendition of Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag.

Carnegie Hall presents pianist Seong-Jin Cho performing the complete solo piano works of Ravel, 8 p.m. February 5. carnegiehall.org


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