Sensitivity, Passion, and Deftness
Tom Blass is enthralled with the gala piano concert
Four perfectly curated pieces – plus the most charming of encores. Two young pianists whose careers we hope to follow through ensuing years. An orchestra attentive to the soloists’ musicianship. And a conductor, brokering that fine and difficult balance with flair but without ego.
It may not be the Met in New York, Vienna’s Musikverein, or even the Wigmore Hall, but the talent and integrity and pure joie de vivre insinuated in every bar of the Gala concert that capped off the Hastings International Piano competition was more than ample compensation: here was an audience intent on the sheer delight of listening. And here was music crying out to be heard.
Commanding the audience’s full and immediate attention, the programme began with Dvorak’s Carnival Overture – a piece which describes a wanderer arriving in a city at night to find a ‘carnival of pleasure in full flow’ (so wrote the composer for its 1892 debut). And we were wholly convinced by playing that was exuberant without ‘oompah’, clamorous but never clumsy, brave but shy of bravura, and took the sharp turns, the abrupt shifts in mood and tempo, in its stride. This was the Royal Philharmonic reminding us what they can do. The audience knew how good it was, showing their appreciation with palm-stinging gusto.
But they were hungry for the piano.
Enter, almost bashfully, stage left, 19-year-old Shunta Morimoto, to deliver the first dose: the opening lines of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.4. A few bars, piano all alone. Chords simple, profound, yet feather light. The theme leaves Morimoto and is taken up by the orchestra, which elaborates, discusses, returns it. A conversation between piano and orchestra, but sometimes the dynamic is that of chorus and soliloquy, but always, the timing of the transition seamless.
And yes, Morimoto’s playing was technically superb, but it was more than that. It was sensitive without over-sensuality, emphatic where required but without swagger. Through the long solo passage, the audience were entirely in his thrall. Coughs, splutters, murmurs in abeyance as Shunta reminded us that the Viennese Wildman remains the great master, and that he, though not yet 20, may yet become an important apostle.
One learns from the nicely written programme that in both 1935 and 1936, Sergei Rachmaninov himself played at the White Rock theatre (then better known for classical concerts than for pantomime and tribute bands), having been engaged ‘at great expense’ as a draw for well-to-do visitors to Hastings and St Leonards.
Budget and other insurmountable barriers may preclude the composer himself from ever returning, but his legacy was consummately safe in the hands of 22-year-old Mariamna Sherling.
Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini is complex and clever, so intrinsically difficult that Rachmaninov himself struggled to play some passages. It opens, though, with pure, lush, cinematic emotion.
But there’s more than pathos at play here. Homage, irony, sweeping flourishes, nods to Gregorian chant, and demands for extraordinary virtuosity. Sherling played as though born to do so, hands and keys apparently joined at the figurative hips, luring, taunting even the most familiar parts of the piece, working with an orchestra showing both passion and deftness – and ending the programmed part of the evening with crashing aplomb, and a wry last bar.
Creaky knees and tight seats were perhaps the only obstacle to a standing ovation, but we gave, noisily, what we could by way of gratitude. We were not to be denied our dessert. And in a sense, we had a double helping. After the requisite standings and bowings, a second stool was brought to the piano and the bright young stars sat beside each other, Sherling taking the bass end of the keyboard, Morimoto the treble, to play a duet full of brilliance, sparkle and hope. This we carried out with us, with a few remembered bars, as a buffer against the March chill, to hold on to while we could.
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