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.

 

 

Vancouver Debut - Kate Liu

Pianist Kate Liu made her much anticipated recital debut yesterday. In case you haven’t heard, she was the bronze-medal winner of the 2015 International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, as well as the Polish Radio prize for best performance of a mazurka. Those who came expecting an avalanche of Chopin may have been disappointed at the programme, but it has been almost four years since the Chopin competition, and we should not be surprised that any artist would want to expand her repertoire. She had certainly not chosen a programme for the faint-hearted, but one that challenged every aspect of her musical and pianistic abilities. 

Liu began her performance with Brahms’ Ballades, Op. 10. These are unusual for Brahms’ early music because unlike the sonatas or variations, these are not virtuosic works by any means, but almost foreshadow those wonderful late opuses that Brahms was to write at the end of his life. Liu played these pieces almost like a series of ruminations, looking very much inwardly at the music. To be sure, there was drama when drama was called for, such as in the shattering climax of the Ballade in D minor, Op. 10, No. 1. At the return of the A section, Liu played the left hand triplets that conjured the disquieting nature of the original ballad, evoking in my mind an impression of one injured. 

I was very taken with the beauty of her sound, and how she voiced the octaves and chords at the beginning of the Ballade in D major, Op. 10, No. 2. There may be those who wish for greater drama in the Allegro non troppo section, but an examination of the score reveals that Brahms only wrote a single, very brief fortissimo indication. Even in the relatively stormier Ballade in B minor, Op. 10, No. 3, the dynamic indications range from pianississimo (ppp) to forte only, with many more indications in the softer dynamic ranges. In the beautiful Ballade in B major, Op. 10, No. 4, with the descending figures in the opening foreshadowing the late Intermezzo in B minor, Op, 119, No. 1, Liu really achieved a sense of repose. In the Piu Lento section, there was real depth of sound, and a feeling of absolute stillness. She certainly paid much more than lip service to Brahms’ indication of Col intimissimo sentimento. These are perhaps very personal interpretations to these early Brahms works. That said, Liu was doing no more than working (hard) to bring out what the composer asks for, a really remarkable achievement for someone so young. 

Of all of Chopin’s works, I believe that the mazurkas invite the greatest range of interpretative views. The inevitable question is whether the artist penetrated the composer’s soul with these, Chopin’s most personal and original works. The answer here was and is a resounding yes. Kate Liu painted Chopin’s Mazurka in A minor, Op. 59, No. 1, on a large canvas. She played this large-scale miniature in a spacious manner, and lavished her attention to the many pauses and spaces within the music. At times, it almost sounded as if she was improvising. Her playing of the Mazurka in A-flat, Op. 59, No. 2, brought out the elegance of this music, and her phrasing here was truly magical. She brought us back to the world of the Polish countryside with her idiomatic performance of the Mazurka in F-sharp minor, Op. 59, No. 3. I also liked her slightly wistful approach to the F-sharp major section.

Two short works concluded the first half of Liu’s recital. Liu is not a pianist with a big sound. That said, her playing of Rachmaninoff’s Etude-tableaux in E-flat minor, Op. 39, No. 5 and Liszt’s Transcendental Etude No. 10 in F minor(“Appassionata”) revealed the richness of the sound she evoked from the piano, a sound that is never ugly or percussive. Certainly these works, which most pianists would use as a mere vehicle to demonstrate his or her technical abilities, made me feel that she had thought through these works carefully. In the Liszt especially, there was an easy elegance that I found appealing. It is interesting that it was in these relatively virtuosic works that showed her to be very much a thinking musician.

The second half of the recital was taken up with one very large-scale work – Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 8, the last of the three so-called “war sonatas”. Liu successfully navigated through the bleak soundscape of the first movement, giving it a sense of coherence and totality. The second movement (Andante sognando) once again highlighted the beauty of her sound as well as the lyricism of her playing. Liu more than rose to the technical challenges laid down by the composer in the third movement, and her blistering, almost orchestral, playing of the third movement left the piano limp and the audience breathless. We would of course forgive her for not wanting to play any encore after such a performance.

Sunday’s recital confirmed my view that Kate Liu is not “just” another fire-breathing virtuoso with steel fingers, but a musician and artist with a carefully considered view to whatever she is playing. She is of course only at the outset of her artistic journey. For now, I only hope that she is “done” with the competition circuit, because I believe that what she needs is to strike out on her own path and find her place within the artistic firmament.