Shunta Morimoto at the Denia International Piano Festival in Bach, Chopin and Liszt

 

I don’t normally write detailed reviews of chamber music concerts. It’s not because they often aren’t memorable, it’s just that I tend to go to so many of them, it’s often hard to keep up with the writing! This lack of motivation to put pen paper is especially marked when the repertoire on offer is very much standard, comprising often performed works that frankly I have heard many times. It’s not that familiarity breeds contempt. It’s just that what does one say about another fairly standard performance of a standard work, albeit that both the work and the performance are superb? Nearly all the performances I have heard over the years are wholly competent, with one or two exceptions, but it becomes hard to say anything new about them. So what is it about a concert that featured J. S. Bach’s French Suite No. 6 BWV 817, Chopin’s Opus 28 Preludes and Liszt’s Dante Sonata that has provoked me to write? Answer: the performer and the performance. Both were outstanding.

Shunta Morimoto is a young Japanese pianist. He was 19 when he won the Concurso de Piano Gonzalo Soriano in Alicante in April 2024. The competition is organized by Ars Alta Cultural in conjunction with Conservatorio Profesional de Música, Guitarrista José Tomás and this year there were over 100 entrants, with half of them competing in level D, the section for adults, whose age rage was from 18 to 32. Shunta Morimoto, therefore, was at the younger end of the range, and he was the youngest of the finalists. I have been listening to music intently for about 60 years. But I knew from the moment Shunta Morimoto depressed a key in that room in April that he would win the competition and, furthermore, that I was about to witness something wholly special. Put simply, Shunta Morimoto is a genius.

Part of the prize for winning the Gonzalo Soriano competition was to appear in the Ars Alta Cultural concert series in Denia at the end of 2024 and that concert, part of the Denia International Piano Festival, was last night. Shunta Morimoto offered the program mentioned above and, for perhaps the first time in thousands of concerts and recitals that I have attended, I can report that not one of the 110 or so people in the audience made a single sound, apart from applause, of course, throughout the one and a half hours of music. There was no interval, but amongst the audience, silence ruled, so utterly wrapt was everyone in what they heard.

It is hard to describe in words what is so compelling about this young man’s playing. The moment you hear the music, it is obvious, but written words have to be read, not heard. Many pianists use bravura, strength and volume to impress. Many play as fast as possible. Shunta Morimoto can offer bravura, the spectacular and the speedy. But above all what he can do is communicate via the music and it is this speaking, apparently directly to an audience without the need of words that is utterly captivating, even arresting.

Every phrase of every piece he played last night was shaped, thought through to make musical sense. At times, he played so softly the music was barely audible, but every note was there, every gesture was clear, every phrase fit perfectly with the musical argument he presented. Even the silences he interspersed for effect were listened to intently by a thoroughly captivated audience.

Chopin’s Opus 28 Preludes, perhaps, was never intended to be played as a single work. But in the right hands, even a composer’s lack of vision can be straightened. I am reminded of a performance about 30 years ago when Murray McLachlan played all the Etudes of Chopin end to end, Opus 25 followed by Opus 10. He was clear that it would not the other way round. I have never forgotten that performance on a baby grand Kawai in a Brunei Hotel. Last night, Shunta Morimoto knew that the Opus 28 Preludes could be played as a single work, and he was right. He succeeded completely.

The Liszt that followed, of course, was breathtaking. In any hands, this Dante Sonata is a real monster, requiring all the skills that a pianist can possibly muster to bring it off. Not only did Shunta Morimoto succeed, but he appeared to bring a new dimension to the work by shaping the quieter sections so finely and so eloquently. Earlier in the day, I had listened to two other performances, by Paul Lewis and Alfred Brendel, so the work was already in my head. Shunta Morimoto’s rendition made me feel like I was hearing it for the first time, so surprising did I find his nuances of interpretation. It was totally recognisable, but totally new at the same time. What a performance!

After a wholly spontaneous standing ovation, he offered the Chopin Barcarole as a substantial encore. Shunta Morimoto, for sure, is a unique talent. He surely has a stellar career ahead of him, and richly deserved. Special.

Shunta Morimoto plays in Denia, 7 November 2024, 8pm, Teatro Centro Social

 

Programa 29 de noviembre Festival de Piano de Denia - Mihaela Manea tocará Scarlatti, Brahms, Enescu y Liszt

 

Programa 15 de noviembre Festival de Piano de Denia

 

Congyu Wang - 24 Oct Denia International Piano Festival

 

 

Congyu Wan's playing was explosive and at the same time tender. He has definitely thought about every phrase. But he does not over-shape or over-interpret. The emphasis is where it needs to be, the rubato is applied, but never overdone. The dynamics are wide, but never over-emphasised. He has a tendency with Chopin to slow the piano and accelerate the forte. In concert it works beautifully, but the approach might not get past a nit-picking reviewer on disc.

He chose to play the Chopin Nocturne and the Liszt Liebestraum together, deliberately holding off the applause at the end of the Chopin. The effect was to increase musical tension. The Denia audience was spellbound to silenece anyway! Quite memorable. The Earl Wild arrangement of the Vocalise transforms the melody into what sounds like another prelude to add to the Rachmaninov set. There’s a central section that is explosive. After that the Kreisler Libeslied sounds like a show-off piece, which is what it is, but the Rachmnaninov harmony saves it and, indeed, makes it interesting. The Gershwin preludes again sounded more pianistic than usual. Just a little research shows that Earl Wild reworked seven Gershwin Preludes – the usual performance does the three that Gershwin himself published under the title. These pieces were quite different. Highly pianistic and with recognisable melodies that kept poking through the notes. The overall effect was wonderful and simply put brought the house down.

After that, Congyu Wang then embarked on Gaspard de la Nuit. Now this is a challenge at the best of times. It is virtuosic in a way that perhaps only Ravel could write. It’s a style that is unique. It sounds literally like no-one else. But what demands he makes to mimic simplicity! One feels that Ravel always wanted to simplify, but the way his mind worked was just different from the rest of us. The pianistic elements don’t feel like decoration. They are essential elements in the music’s sense.

Congyu Wang’s playing was breath-taking. The emphasis here was in the contrasts. Slow-fast, quiet-loud, the contrasts seemed emphasised, but never mannered. Add to that the rhythmic tension that is always part of Ravel's thinking and the result is this masterpiece of the concert hall. He had really thought about the overall shape of the piece and that came across with clarity. Just what the rather strange mind of Maurice Ravel had in mind we will never know. What is clear is that the place he lived was not quite in this universe, such a transporting experience does his music offer - and this performance in particular.

And then, at the end of the programme, we heard Aldoraba de Garcioso. This is Ravel in “Spanish” mode and the audience will have been totally familiar with the musical phrases and harmonies that keep surfacing in this consciousness stream that is pure Ravel. The playing was again beyond brilliant, but always sympathetic, never spectacular just for effect. Congyu Wang is a true artist.

There followed three encores. Chopin, Debussy and more Chopin. The audience would have stayed for more, but after a programme like that at least one person involved deserved a rest.

 

 

 

 

Costa Blaca Arts Update - Dmytro Choni in Denia

 

Dmytro Choni is a pianist from Ukraine who has won the Santander competition and finished fourth in Leeds. Such results are irrelevant once a musician presents him or herself as a performer: the only thing that counts is a communication with an audience via the interpretation of music. On the evidence of this concert in Denia, Dmytro Choni has achieved near perfection in the art of performance.

Pianists often choose programmes that intend to show off technical brilliance rather than interpretive quality. At first sight, Dmytro Choni’s programme might appear to fall into this category. After all, it’s not anyone who starts an evening with the two Brahms Rhapsodies and then plays for an hour and a half to finish with a work as grand as the Dante Sonata of Liszt. There was even enough energy for an encore.

Those two Brahms Rhapsodies came across as more substantial pieces than I had remembered. Placed together, the contrasts and similarities became clear as they combined to mimic a single work. These were followed by perhaps the most taxing music on the programme. The Sarcasms of Prokofiev sound like Malevich meeting Picasso. Almost aggressively modernistic, these short pieces make a deep impression in the concert hall, since they seem to question what it is that we expect from music. They are atonal in parts, melodic in others, rhythmic here and there, broken elsewhere. Under the fingers of a pianist who does not actively associate with their intention, these pieces can dissolve into an amorphous mass of disconnected fragments. When played with sensitivity and design, as Dmytro Choni did, they become an abstract, surreal world where nothing can be assumed, but a world which we can inhabit. They surprise and enchant at the same time.

Dmytro Choni followed the Prokofiev pieced with the Sonata No1 of Ginastera. Written forty or so years after the Sarcasms, there are sections of this sonata that inhabit a similar sound world, underlining just how experimental was the vision of Prokofiev. Underpinning Ginastera’s music there is always at least an idea of an Argentinian dance, though usually of a much more energetic type than the languid tango. But here also, especially in the slow movement, there is a tendency towards the atonal, and much less stress of rhythm as musical content. In the other three movements, it was rhythm that left enduring impressions.

Book One of Debussy’s Images followed. Though harmonically Debussy’s sound world is now familiar to audiences, in its time it was nothing less than revolutionary. After the rhythmic drive of much of the Ginastera, Debussy’s sense of space impressed and this came across in the playing.

And the, having already earned his living several times over, Dmytro Choni ended the concert with Liszt’s After a lecture on Dante, Fantasia quasi sonata. It’s a vast piano sonata in everything but name and shares musical ideas with the Sonata Liszt did write. This is music on a grand scale and needs a pianist with vision and interpretive skill as well as the technical skills to render the experience musically credible rather than a mere test of dexterity. And this audience was treated to a superbly shaped picture of how Liszt responded to Dante, though it must be said that the pianist was tiring towards the end. Understandably so… It’s not every pianist who take on a programme like this!

The evening finished with an encore. It was inevitable, perhaps essential that this Ukrainian pianist would finish with some music from his homeland. The short, lyrical but reflective piece by Valentin Silvestrov was perfect, as was the rest of this superb recital.

 

Poisoned Petals by Andy Crabb

Poisoned Petals by Andy Crabb is a set of over forty short stories, tales with a Spanish flavour. Most are set in Spain, with many featuring locations and people from within the Costa Blanca, where the author lives, works and continually observes. Some are historical, others utterly contemporary, both in time and in content.

Property developers, estate agents and used car salesmen figure alongside more traditional Spanish figures, such as the bar owner, the peasant farmer and the land owner. Some stories feature characters from Spain’s Moorish period, and others pre-Visigoth, even pre-Roman Iberians.

It is surprising, therefore, to read in the highly informative author’s postscript that several of the pieces germinated elsewhere, in Britain and southern Africa, for instance. Some were transplanted items from newspaper stories, while others arose from museum visits, local tales or shared discussion with other writers.

But the stories grew in Andy Crabb’s fertile imagination and bloomed into a veritable display of skilful, entertaining writing. The fact that the author claims they eventually flowered into Poisoned Petals gives the reader a hint from the start that irony and twist will play their part.

Many of Andy Crabb’s stories deal with the sibling concepts of revenge and retribution. People are often “getting away with something”, getting one up on an innocent or unsuspecting victim. Driven to anger by such perfidious exploitation, these inherently gentler, law-abiding characters themselves become vengeful, calculating deceivers, until the score is decisively settled. In often morally satisfying conclusions, many of the original villains receive a comeuppance that is significantly sweeter than mere defeat, longer lasting than simple victory.

And each of these conclusions has been richly deserved. In Preserved For Posterity, for instance, the retribution of the wronged husband is horrid in the extreme. But then the unjustly punished lover-thief-craftsman of the story was never really guilty of his accused crime. We know that. But then that’s perhaps why he has the final, though silent, laugh at the judgment of eternity. So it is ideas of morality and justice, honesty and loyalty that suffuse Poisoned Petals.

We are presented with people who try to ride roughshod over others, whose understandable, merely human hesitancy, born of their desire to uphold and respect another’s potential for dignity, identifies them as potential prey. Usually the victims win through in the end, turning the tables decisively on their predators. But this often happens only after the victims, themselves, have displayed their ability to become, if provoked, as devious, as base, as calculating and, indeed, as mercenary as the objects of their retribution. And so Poisoned Petals gives some beautiful insights into human behaviour, some vivid illustrations of resourcefulness.

It is a collection to read over a week or two, a few stories at a time, since each is self-contained and memorable. The stories provoke us to reflect on that human condition, and profitably, enjoyably so.

View this book on amazon Poisoned Petals