San Francisco Classical Voice

RECITAL REVIEW

San Francisco
Young Pianists'
Competition Winners
Sumika Shiokawa
Aleksey Artemev

September 1, 2006

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Looking to the Future

By Heuwell Tircuit

Only two of the six winners of the 24th Annual San Francisco Young Pianists’ Competition were presented on Friday afternoon at San Francisco State University. A promising young talent, Sumika Shiokawa, was joined by Aleksey Artemev, a fully accomplished virtuoso, who is clearly ready for the international competition. (The other four winners — Julio Elizade, Ruishi Chen, Stephanie Ou, and Angela Park — were “unable to appear,” most likely because they couldn’t get out of school.)

The program began with Shiokawa playing the first movement of Mozart’s Sonata No. 14 in C Minor, K. 457. Next, Artemev gave outstanding, first-class performances of Beethoven’s Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp Minor, Op. 27, No. 2 (the famous “Moonlight” Sonata); followed by two Rachmaninoff knuckle-busters, Prelude in G-sharp Minor, Op. 32, No. 12, and the études tableaux from the first set of Op. 39, which is No. 5 or No. 6, depending on how you care to look at the set. I wonder if the previous 23 Young Pianists’ Competition recitals could have produced a better set arrangement.

A promising performance

Shiokawa, a student of Annamarie McCarthy, took her time at the beginning. She sat quietly for a minute, collecting her concentration for Mozart’s demanding score. It worked. Her performance took an assertive approach, which is apt for the dramatic sonata. There’s no room for daintiness in that almost Beethovian score. Of even more importance was her fine sense of phrasing, highlighted by discreet bits of tempo alterations that colored expressive moments.

She also displayed an elegant French type of staccato. The notes were short, but not so short as to sound like a percussive chirp — the pitches need some duration to work. My one complaint would be Shiokawa’s lack of dynamic contrasts. Rarely was she tremendously loud or particularly soft. Still, her natural feeling for the musical phrasing and the contrasting bits of tempo change indicated a strong innate ability. A little polish is still needed, but that shouldn’t be difficult for her to achieve.

Artemev, a 21-year-old student of Mack McCray at the San Francisco Conservatory, sailed through the difficult Beethoven and Rachmaninoff works like a maestro. The tall, lanky Russian from Uzbekistan is clearly ready to go out and face the cold cruel world of piano careers. His remarkably tasteful and adroit playing of Beethoven’s famous Adagio opening movement brimmed with poetic conviction. His voicing of the various elements of texture within that section, and everywhere else, was a model of excellence.

Technical mastery

I doubt that many music fans realize how difficult that kind of controlled voicing can be. It requires exacting control of each finger, not just through the weight of each hand. Let’s say you have five notes to play simultaneously: A slightly stronger depression of the left-hand’s pinky finger can provide a rich sonority that brings out a darker color. Similarly, the weight of the other four fingers can change the whole color of the sound. If you’re playing a melody, flowing accompaniment, and a securing a bass line all at once, you begin to appreciate the difficulty. But that difficulty is tripled in a slow, quiet piece such as the Beethoven Adagio.

Maybe I’m being too technical, but my point is that Artemev plays all of these elements with apparent ease. It doesn’t matter whether this is an intuitive gift or it has been taught. He does what few pianists I can think of can do — and those who I can recall (Walter Gieseking, Wilhelm Kempff, and Emile Gilels) are all deceased. I can’t remember ever hearing this sonata played better, and only rarely as well.

Artemev took a leisurely approach to the Minuet, which he highlighted by pixie touches of humor. The piece smiled after that rather grim first movement, and before the furious Toccata finale. The “Moonlight” has always struck me as one of Beethoven’s oddest constructions, since no two movements seem to have anything to do with their siblings. His contemporaries thought so as well, which is why Mendelssohn gave the German premiere more than 30 years after the sonata’s publication. Even Weber thought this Beethoven composition insane.

Like its companion, Sonata Op. 27, the piece’s true title was simply Sonata quasi una fantasia. The word “moon” was not Beethoven’s but came from someone’s remark that the first movement sounded like, “A boat passing wild scenery on Lake Lucerne in the moonlight.” Sensing that this far-out Romantic subtitle would sell — especially to those who can’t enjoy music unless it paints a picture for them — the publisher dubbed it “Moonlight.”

A performance to quiet all confusion

Artemev also produced idealized presentations of the two contrasting Rachmaninoff pieces. He opened with the delicate whirring of the Prelude in G-sharp Minor, and managed to hold the composer’s schmaltz in check. As George Szell once noted, “Sloppiness is not expressiveness.” Artemev managed to play as Rachmaninoff did, with technical proficiency and restraint.

The mixed numbering of the étude as No. 5 (the standard classification) and as No. 6 has to do with another publication quirk. Of the nine études, Rachmaninoff wrote a sixth, but then withdrew the fifth, in D Minor. So No. 6 (in G-sharp Minor) moved up a chair, to No. 5. On the other hand, the original No. 5 was published posthumously, which created even more confusion over the numbering. In contrast to the delicate prelude, the étude is an onslaught. Artemev roared into it like a volcano in a bad mood, and held on to the beauty of timbre even during such violent music. It was remarkable.

There’s been no shortage of fine piano performances of late, but this was some of the finest pianism as I have ever encountered. Artemev is a name to watch and he will make a splash in the international scene — I don’t need a starry hat to forecast that. It’s glaringly obvious, and the performance made for a sensational way to celebrate the competition’s 24th anniversary.

(Heuwell Tircuit is a composer, performer, and writer who was chief writer for Gramophone Japan and for 21 years a music reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle. He wrote previously for Chicago's American and the Asahi Evening News.)