Kate Liu, Before the Grand Competition

Ever since capturing the attention of the music world with her performance at the 2015 International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, Kate Liu has been very much in the thoughts of music and piano lovers the world over. Just as many in the piano world, I was concerned when she was forced to halt her performance activities because of a hand injury. I am happy that Kate Liu seems to be back, and in great form, as evident in her recent performance in Poland.

 

From the first notes of Händel’s Suite in E major, HWV 430, I was captivated by her sound, how she allows the sound to develop and envelop the space around her.  She does not hesitate to use the pedal generously to play this music, and her playing, especially of the Praeludium, has a great deal of freedom and space. At the same time, I find the performance completely idiomatic. In the Courante, the music really floats and dances. In the famous Air and “Harmonious Blacksmith” variations, there is a sense of playfulness in the way she plays it, as well as a real organic connection between the theme and the variations. The fast-moving 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th variations are simply exhilarating and breathtaking under her fingers. 

 

I had the good fortune to hear her play Chopin’s Op. 59 mazurkas in her Vancouver recital. I believe her interpretation of these late masterpieces has matured. In the Mazurka in A minor, Op. 59, No. 1, she took time for the music to speak for itself, and she seems to play the work like reliving a dream. One of the remarkable things about Liu’s is that she draws the listener into the core of Chopin’s soul, and in the process reveals to us the deep sadness inherent in the music. I was deeply moved by her performance of the Mazurka in A-flat major, Op. 59, No. 2. Her interpretation goes far beyond the outward charm of the music, and reveals the dignity and heartbreak of the music. Liu brings out the earthiness of the opening of the Mazurka in F-sharp minor, Op. 59, No. 3. I held my breath as I beheld the unbelievable beauty of the B section. Throughout the performance of these three works, I was completely captivated by her playing, and was absolutely drawn into Chopin’s emotional and sound world.

 

The second half of her recital, dedicated to the works of Robert Schumann, began with a moving rendition of the Arabesque in C major, Op. 18. Once again, my ears were captured by the depth and beauty of her sound, as well as the euphoniousness of her rendition of this charming work. As well, she brings out the unique and contrasting character of each section, as well as the dreamy nature of Schumann’s creativity. I find her playing of the work’s ending (Zum Schluss, Langsam) overwhelmingly beautiful.

 

The concert ended with an impassioned reading of the monumental Fantasy in C major, Op. 17. As in the Chopin, Liu completely draws the listener into Schumann’s inner world. Liu’s sound is now bigger and bolder since I last heard her and she is even more able to bring out the extremes in sound demanded for this music. Throughout the performance, I felt that Liu was someone who both lost herself in the music, but who also saw clearly the way before her. In the Im Legendenton section, her interpretation had a kind of dreamy, faraway (almost fairy tale) quality to it. The final Adagio, when the composer quotes from Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte, was emotionally shattering.

 

Liu observed Schumann’s mf marking in the beginning of the second movement, and let the music build. I also appreciate her pacing in this movement, and how she does not overplay the music, or uses it as a vehicle for her virtuosity. She acquitted herself brilliantly in the treacherous coda. 

 

Once again, her musicality and artistry are evident with the profound and otherworldly beauty of the third movement. Liu plays this movement as one enormous buildup to the tremendous climax at the end. The quality of her pianissimo in the beginning of the A-flat major section is quite extraordinary. The final buildup – Nach und nach bewegter und schneller – was overwhelmingly emotional, and the Adagio in the final measures sounded like a closing benediction.

 

With Schumann’s Fantasy as well as the Kreisleriana, Op. 16, we feel the creativity of the composer operating at a fever pitch. Kate Liu’s artistry recreated for us this white heat of the composer’s creative genius with her rendition of the Fantasy. Even experiencing this concert online, one feels the audience in communion with the artist as she embarks upon this aesthetic experience.

 

In Schubert’s Ungarische Melodie, D. 817, which she played as an encore, Liu captured to perfection the shifting shades of light and darkness so inherent in Schubert’s music.

 

I do not believe that Kate Liu will ever become the kind of barnstorming, note-perfect pianist we see so much of today. As Theodor Leschetizky said to Arthur Schnabel, “You will never be a pianist; you are a musician”, Kate Liu is a musician and artist, with her own original and highly personal voice. We, the music lovers, wait with anticipation for the next chapter of her artistic journey.

 

 

Chasing Chopin

 In the last decade, writers and music scholars seem to have devoted much effort on the life and music of Chopin. Starting with the 2011 update of Adam Zamoyski’s Chopin, to Paul Kildea’s Chopin’s Piano: A Journey Through Romanticism, and to Alan Walker’s masterful and unsurpassable Fryderyk Chopin: A life and Times, these writers address many aspects of the composer’s life and art.

 

Most recently, we have Annik LaFarge’s Chasing Chopin: A Musical Journey Across Three Centuries, Four Countries, and a Half-Dozen Revolutions (Simon & Schuster, 2020), a book that is more difficult to categorize, or to write about.

 

The book grew out of the author’s love of and fascination for Chopin’s famous funeral march, the third movement of his Sonata in B-flat minor, Op. 35. This is a more personal journey of the writer in trying to understand Chopin’s elusive work, a musical creation that, in spite of its title, had no precedent. Throughout the book, the author, I believe, tries to discuss the relevance of the work, and Chopin’s music in general, in today’s world. If we were able to bring Chopin back to our own time, LaFarge, he would, “encounter a world that has much in common with his own: countries invade their neighbors, people flee their warn-torn homelands, often unable to return; barricades go up in city streets; nationalism rages around the globe; new technology brings wave after wave of cultural and social changes; dictators bloviate; individual voices are amplified.” Chopin, she adds, would find his music being “reinvented and reclaimed in so many surprising ways and unusual places.”

 

Indeed, ethnomusicologist and folk music specialist Maria Pomianowska and her folk band attempt to do exactly this, to “reinvent” the music of Chopin. Playing with instrumentalists from many different cultures and ethnicities, she explores how his music might sound in today’s multicultural world, with the influences of music from a myriad of inspirations.

 

In terms of information or knowledge, there isn’t very much here that cannot already be found elsewhere. But then this isn’t meant to be a conventional biography, but an author’s “take” on how Chopin’s music relates to her own life and that of the world around her. 

 

According to the great Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz, “the idea of Poland constituted the nation itself in the hearts of its own people, and that idea could live on, no matter what.” On top of the composer’s genius, the most potent inspiration for Chopin’s creativity is probably the idea of exile, the love of his homeland that is sublimated in his musical creations. This “idea” of Poland permeates every one of the composer’s works, but it is perhaps this very idea that makes Chopin’s music so universally appealing. 

 

The author does address some interesting aspects of Chopin’s art. She devotes some pages to the evolution of the piano up to Chopin’s time, and the composer’s love for the Pleyel piano – perhaps the most famous endorsement of an artist for a brand of instrument. In Chopin’s words, the Pleyel was the instrument for “the enunciation of my innermost thoughts.” 

 

Also important in the current volume’s narrative is Chopin’s love for opera. Chopin arrived in the Paris of Berlioz and Meyerbeer. His love for opera inspired not only his melodic creation but his approach to piano playing. It was, as the author states, also the time of the birth of programmatic music, the year 1830 was the year when Berlioz programmatic Symphonie Fantistique was premiered. For me, it seems ironic that, with all of Chopin’s love for the narrative nature of opera, he resolutely resisted any hint of story-telling in his own music. Unlike his famous contemporary Liszt, none of Chopin’s works carry any programmatic titles. None of Chopin’s compositions would paint any pictures, or tell any story. In this way, Chopin is very much a classicist, leaving the interpreters to draw upon his or her own imagination in playing his music.

 

Perhaps because she herself is a dedicated piano student, LaFarge is also fascinated with Chopin’s teaching. In the midst of the craze for the piano, Chopin also tried to codified his own teaching by writing a piano method, a project he left unfinished. The author addresses many aspects of Chopin’s teaching, from his emphasis on a singing tone as well as comfort of the hands, the use of the wrist to express “breathing” in a musical phrase, and his aim to foster individualism and freedom in his students. 

 

Naturally, no story involving Chopin would be complete without discussing his relationship with George Sand, their infamous trip to Majorca, and their life together at Sand’s house in Nohant. It was in Nohant that Chopin completed work on the Op. 35 sonata. The author suggests that Chopin’s inspiration and model for the sonata could have been Beethoven’s Sonata in A-flat major, Op. 26, one of his favourite Beethoven sonatas, and a work that also included a grand funeral march as its third movement - “Trills on the keyboard evoke drumrolls…and the slowly rising and falling crescendos and decrescendos give the march a sense of dignity and importance” - a description that could also easily fit Chopin’s funeral march. The first public performance of the funeral march was at the composer’s own funeral at La Madeleine church, in an orchestration by the composer Henri Reber, one of the composers to whom Chopin bequeathed his piano method.

 

There are other personal and intriguing stories surrounding and involving the music of Chopin, and the author should be commended in looking hard for evidence of the relevance today of Chopin’s music. Perhaps she needs look no further than to just think about the enduring popularity of his music. From the struggling amateur pianists to towering artists like Arthur Rubinstein, Vladimir Horowitz, and Sergei Rachmaninoff, Chopin’s music remains a touchstone of their repertoire. 

 

LaFarge’s book is a personal journal of musical discovery, a result that grows out of her love for the music of Chopin. It is not, nor does it try to be, a comprehensive overview of the composer’s life, but a highly personal glimpse into various aspects of his art, and a book that betrays the writer’s passion and curiosity for the subject matter.