Concert Review: Yeol Eum Son at Mechanics Hall, Worcester, MA

Ms. Son’s performance of Debussy’s Preludes nos. 3–8, while mostly note-perfect, was marked by a tentativeness that kept any of them from really blossoming.

By Jonathan Blumhofer.

Pianist Yeol Eum Son demonstrated great technical accomplishment, while also suggesting that there are some areas in which she might yet develop, interpretively.

“My father would not let me take up the piano,” Hector Berlioz wrote in his Memoirs. “I should no doubt have turned into a formidable pianist in the company of forty thousand others.” Pianist Yeol Eum Son, who performed on Wednesday night at Mechanics Hall as part of the 152nd Music Worcester Festival, is in the top tier of that 40,000, having taken prizes at the Tchaikovsky and Van Cliburn Piano Competitions and performed with numerous orchestras, including the New York and Israel Philharmonics. Her recital in Worcester, which consisted of pieces by Baldassare Galuppi, Debussy, Prokofiev, and Liszt’s arrangement of the Wedding March from Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, demonstrated great technical accomplishment, while also suggesting that there are some areas in which she might yet develop, interpretively.

Ms. Son began with Galuppi’s Keyboard Sonata no. 5. Galuppi is now a footnote in music history, though he was a prolific eighteenth-century, Italian composer whose career began as Bach’s reached its peak in the 1720s and ended the year of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro (1786). The present Sonata, one of several hundred that he wrote for the instrument, falls into three movements, the first slow, the second two fast. Ms. Son proved herself perfectly at home in Galuppi’s clear-textured idiom, nicely drawing out the lyrical qualities of the score while also catching its spirited moments. If the piece became rather tiresome as it progressed, that was less Ms. Son’s fault than Galuppi’s: a big part of his compositional technique in the Sonata involves repeating nearly every two- or three-bar phrase at least once, which becomes redundant after a while. Even so, Ms. Son’s performance perfectly captured the score’s inherent charm and naïveté.

Her next selection, though, of six preludes from Book One of Debussy’s collection, was problematic. Perhaps better than any other keyboard composer, Debussy succeeded in making the piano sound like an orchestra—one finds instrumental colors in these Preludes, for instance, that one expects from a sumptuous Straussian orchestra rather than a single instrument—and in the best performances of this repertoire, these sonorities come vividly to life. Additionally, in the Preludes Debussy aided (or hindered, depending on your point of view) both performer and audience by supplying singular, evocative titles for each movement. Thus, each prelude can be understood as a miniature depiction of a specific scene.

Ms. Son’s performance of Preludes nos. 3–8, while mostly note-perfect, was marked by a tentativeness that kept any of them from really blossoming. This was most true in the slower movements, though the faster ones might have been more strongly etched, too. For instance, her take on the opening prelude, titled “The Wind in the Plain,” was more evocative of a breeze through a thick forest, a rather lethargic exploration of the dynamic range between mezzo piano and mezzo forte. Similarly, Prelude no. 6 (“Footsteps in the Snow”), while perhaps emphasizing the undulating quality of a snowy landscape, came across as a vague, shapeless musical entity that would have benefited from weightier bass and a stronger delineation of structure.

Throughout her reading, it seemed as though whenever Ms. Son was about to take an interpretive leap, she suddenly drew herself back, either worried about the musical consequences or unsure of her take on these pieces. It was all rather frustrating. Happily, she closed with a thoroughly satisfying rendition of the best-known movement, “The Girl With the Flaxen Hair,” sensitively drawing out Debussy’s flowing melodic writing; one hopes her readings of the other five movements will eventually be realized with similar conviction.

Liszt’s arrangement of the Wedding March from Mendelssohn’s incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream then brought the first half of the concert to a rather raucous close. Despite the attention showered on his music during his bicentennial last year, Liszt remains one of the most underrated of major composers. There are plenty of valid reasons for this—the shamelessly flashy virtuosity that drips off every page of this arrangement being one of them—but if ever a composer deserved a serious reassessment, Liszt is the one, a case this same arrangement makes strongly.

What happens in the piece follows: each of the main themes of the Wedding March are given very involved, pianistic treatment, replete with cadenzas and glittering trill-figures. About two-thirds of the way through, Liszt interpolates the opening of the “Fairy’s Dance” (also from A Midsummer Night’s Dream) into the musical texture, and he closes everything out with an energized take on Mendelssohn’s rather stodgy original ending. Though many of the technical tricks Liszt wrote into the piece are stock devices from his pianistic canon—effects to be found in other arrangements, his concerti, and so forth—his treatment of the individual themes and, especially, his incorporation of the “Fairy’s Dance” into the Wedding March are ingenious, the work of a serious composer and a thoughtful musician.

Though these Liszt arrangements aren’t exactly fashionable nowadays, I was very pleased that Ms. Son included this one on her program. After her indistinct take on the Debussy, she launched into Liszt’s bravura writing and never looked back, navigating all its twists and turns without once flinching, and making a thoroughly convincing argument for the arranger.

Yeol Eum Son — Her performance of the violent development section in the huge first movement of the Prokofiev Sonata evoked shrapnel and flying steel, while the gentler second movement was marked by graceful melodies and pungent harmonic turns.

As things turned out, the Liszt was something of a warm-up to the fireworks that followed intermission in Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata no. 8. This is wartime Prokofiev, written in 1944, just before the famous Fifth Symphony, and, while Steven Ledbetter’s program notes might have emphasized the influence of Prokofiev’s wife, Mira, on the Sonata’s composition, the same dark undercurrents found in the later Symphony lurk just below the Sonata’s surface, too.

Ms. Son, again, approached the piece fearlessly, drawing out its lyrical qualities—which are many: Prokofiev was one of the greatest tunesmiths of the twentieth century—while not shying away from its craggier moments. Her performance of the violent development section in the huge first movement evoked shrapnel and flying steel, while the gentler second movement was marked by graceful melodies and pungent harmonic turns. The finale felt a bit more episodic than inevitable, though its overarching character was ever-present: not many composers can make B-flat major sound as disturbing as Prokofiev does in this piece (and in the Fifth Symphony, for that matter), and this performance was unsettling in all the right ways.

Afterwards, Ms. Son treated her audience to not one but three encores: Moszkowski’s Étincelles; an arrangement of the third movement of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony; and a cheeky, ragtime arrangement of the finale of Mozart’s Piano Sonata in A minor. One might question the wisdom of programming such trifles after the drama of the Prokofiev, but Ms. Son and her audience clearly enjoyed themselves, and she let her hair down a bit with some of her most relaxed playing of the evening.

3 Comments

  1. Mary Jen on March 12, 2012 at 7:52 am

    Ms. Son is good artist and performer as well. I love her brilliant work more than anything. Thanks for sharing a nice review of her concert. 🙂

    http://www.miamilimo.net/

  2. Gerrie Collins on February 18, 2013 at 11:11 pm

    The reviewer reveals large holes in pianistic auditory clarity and a ‘small’ one in basic literature: Debussy wrote 12 Preludes in each of two books of preludes, not 11.
    His closing statement, following paragraphs of failed attempts to be a serious (and maybe unbiased?) listener:

    “Afterwards, Ms. Son treated her audience to not one but three encores: Moszkowski’s Étincelles; an arrangement of the third movement of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony; and a cheeky, ragtime arrangement of the finale of Mozart’s Piano Sonata in A minor. One might question the wisdom of programming such trifles after the drama of the Prokofiev,but Ms. Son and her audience clearly enjoyed themselves, and she let her hair down a bit with some of her most relaxed playing of the evening.”

    are not only demonstrative of a kindergartner’s knowledge of piano literature, programming, and encores, but barely a toddler’s understanding of *how* to listen.
    I’ve heard Ms Son’s performance of 90% of the works on this recital, and remember them mostly as being of the highest artistic caliber. She is easily one of the brightest young (26 – 2-18-2013)) stars of the keyboard with both a prodigious repertoire and technique.

    • Jonathan Blumhofer on February 21, 2013 at 11:35 am

      Hi Gerrie,

      While I’m not about to begrudge you your low opinion of my critical abilities, please at least get the little things right: nowhere in this review do I suggest that there are only eleven Debussy preludes (but thanks for the clarification all the same).

      Amusing as I find your little zing about my supposed lack of musical knowledge (and I am, indeed, not a little charmed by it), I’m also curious: how, exactly, does the last paragraph demonstrate my “kindergartner’s knowledge of piano literature, programming, and encores, [and] barely a toddler’s understanding of *how* to listen”? Perhaps because I didn’t think the Prokofiev Eighth Sonata should have been followed by any encores? As I’m sure you’re aware, that particular sonata is a piece that makes some pretty big musical and expressive statements, and, as far as I’m concerned, it’s not necessarily undesirable to head off into the evening to ponder those statements without the distraction of empty, frothily virtuosic encores. Of course, that’s just my opinion – but this is also my review.

      And, while I’m on the subject, please know that my reviews are never unbiased. If you came away from reading (or, again, misreading) this and thinking otherwise, you have my sincere apologies: these are my highly subjective responses to what I heard (now nearly a year ago), no more or less.

      To conclude on a somewhat hopeful note, I think we do agree (at least in part) that Ms. Son is a fine pianist (and I think this review made that clear). However, so are many twenty-something conservatory graduates. Perhaps she will someday join the ranks of the keyboard elites, but, based on this performance (which, from your comment, I infer you didn’t attend), she’s not quite the equal of Kissin, Horowitz, Biss, or any number of others at twenty-six, at least not yet.

      JB

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