Chengcheng Ma’s piano recital goes from Boston to Hell and back
Forte International Group, the organization that presented pianist Chengcheng Ma in recital at Merkin Concert Hall Thursday night, bills itself as “dedicated to bridging the musical worlds of China and the United States.” But if bridges were built on Thursday, they were not so much between nations as between the present and the past.
In Ma’s vigorous renderings, two currently active, Boston-based composers, Ketty Nez and Rodney Lister, alternated with the Romantic icons Chopin and Liszt, with China’s Zhao Zhang putting in the briefest of appearances at the very end.
The Baroque master François Couperin also made his influence felt in the program’s opener, Nez’s suite française, a 2024 work receiving its New York premiere. The suite’s five movements were inspired by five of the French composer’s Pièces de Clavecin, as published in the 1905 Diémer edition, setting up what composer Nez called a “three-way conversation” among eras and tastes.
In addition to dance titles such as allemande and courante, three of the movements bore Couperin’s own fanciful monikers. “L’Auguste” strung together bird calls and fragmentary phrases in a minor tonality. A courante in the ornate style blazed with trills and slides, which continued in the stately sarabande “La Majesteuse,” as harmonies slid from quasi-Baroque to nearly atonal.
Pianist Ma’s crisp touch throughout the work evoked the harpsichord, especially in the fourth movement, a gavotte with whimsical variations that ventured far beyond their 18th-century model into Schumann-like territory. The closing rondeau “Les Abeilles” (the bees) swarmed with distinct voices near and far.
These colorful Baroque-modern character pieces served as a reminder that piano etudes, especially Chopin’s powerfully innovative Op. 10 set of twelve, don’t have to be dry technical exercises. Performing the entire opus, from the Bach-inspired No. 1 in C major to the magnificently turbulent No. 12 in C minor (“Revolutionary”), Ma sought and often found the distinct expressive character of each etude.
A sensitive rubato and long lines distinguished the two etudes in slow tempos, the amorous No. 3 in E major and the melancholy No. 6 in E-flat minor. The arpeggios of No. 8 in F major plunged as exhilaratingly as Esther Williams and her corps de water ballet. Ma’s right pinkie finger sang a sunny tune atop the wide rolled chords of No. 11 in E-flat major.
Elsewhere in the opus, however, digital prowess seemed to take over where a touch of wit or sentiment would have been welcome, to make a more lighthearted “Black Keys” Etude (No. 5, G-flat major) or a more broodingly dramatic “Revolutionary.”
Whatever you think a piece with the title Many’s the Time I’ve Seen Her Nude at the Piano ought to sound like, Rodney Lister’s composition probably isn’t it. Named for a random bit of conversation overheard on a London bus, the piece was a toccata of machine-gun staccato sixteenth notes punctuated by cluster chords at the extreme ends of the keyboard. Driving fiercely ahead throughout, Ma negotiated the shifting patterns and syncopations with aplomb.
Liszt’s “Dante” Sonata—full title Aprés une lecture du Dante: Fantasia quasi Sonata—painted a hellscape echoing with the moans of the damned. Leaving Lister’s mordant staccato behind, Ma sank into Liszt’s full-bodied forte and fortissimo with relish, the dark sonorities only emphasized by the occasional glimpse of heaven, high in the treble and out of reach. Tremolo conflagrations and octave avalanches made for high drama down to the crushing final chord.
The final item, a three-minute confection for piano four-hands by Zhao Zhang, served as the program’s only “encore.” Pianist Yimiao Fang, who is also the head of the Forte international Group, joined Ma onstage in the treble part of Hua Yi Dance, derived from melodies of the Yi people of southwestern China. The whirling pentatonic tunes unavoidably put a Western listener in mind of Ravel’s “Laideronette, Empress of the Pagodas.”
Leave a Comment
