Korean pianist dazzles

Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra
Indiana History Center
Sept. 30-Oct. 1

This has been “female-Korean” week for music lovers at the Indiana History Center’s Basile Theater: First we had the Ahn sisters in an Ensemble Music Society-sponsored chamber program last Wednesday (see clip). Then, two days later, the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra opened its season featuring 20-year-old guest pianist Joyce Yang, with ICO music director Kirk Trevor on the podium. Born in Seoul, Korea, Yang dazzled the regrettably smallish audience. Her appearance here follows her being awarded the silver medal at the 2005 Van Cliburn Piano Competition last June.

Twenty-year-old guest pianist Joyce Yang performed with the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra last weekend.

That Yang played the Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor “dazzlingly” is actually an understatement. It was more like an epiphany for most. With the supplest of wrist, arm and finger motion, she attacked Saint-Saëns’ graceful, tasteful pyrotechnics — the chords; the rapid, double-handed octaves; the scale work; the intricate passage work; the leaps (of faith) from the middle to the upper keyboard always to land squarely on the sought destination — as easily as though it were preordained. But keyboard virtuosity was only the beginning: Yang’s comprehension of the work’s interpretive elements was equally unsurpassed, her pedal work flawless. Her ability to bring out the lead note, no matter how loudly or softly the material surrounding it ... Then, with her solo-encore account of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6, I was transfixed.

It’s true that Yang dropped a few notes and made some other mild slips in the concerto’s scherzo-like middle movement. They were at unexpected, not-necessarily-difficult places and merely seemed to represent momentary concentration lapses. I mention them only because it appears — from our own violin competition experience — to be the bane of silver medalists to fail to get the “gold” because of technical lapses, when they are otherwise superior in every way. Can the Van Cliburn’s 2005 gold medalist, Alexander Kobrin of Russia, actually “be better” than Yang? Hard to believe.

Now beginning his 18th season with the ICO, Trevor’s long tenure has helped mold his orchestra into a precise musical and technical instrument. Since its move last year from cavernous Clowes Hall to an attractive but somewhat tight venue for a 33-piece ensemble, the ICO’s precision in standard fare has become the more obvious, even though a bit more reverb would be sonically enhancing. Trevor’s deliberate approach to the concluding Schubert Symphony No. 4 in C Minor, D.417 (“Tragic”) showed off his modest-sized string section to be crisp, articulate and on-pitch. In addition, hearing a symphonic repertoire piece with a markedly reduced string complement allows the wind parts to be highlighted, nowhere more effectively than in the haunting Andante, the finest symphonic movement Schubert had written to that point. But Trevor and his forces rendered all four movements with an elan as successful as Haydn’s 104th Symphony in the ICO’s season opener a year ago.

Scottish composer James MacMillan’s A Meditation on Iona for strings and percussion (1996) opened Trevor’s program: another dreary contemporary trifle which we’ve recently heard a spate of from the Indianapolis Symphony. A slow, bleak, evocative work lasting 17 minutes, we learn what it is evocative of only in Rudy Ennis’ two pages of notes in the program booklet. For once, the percussion was quite modest, managed entirely by Kevin Kaiser. His judicious use of a metallic “thundersheet” provided the work’s most novel sonic display.