Kevin Chen in Poland streamed live …..substituting at the last minute an indisposed Benjamin Grosvenor. A chance to hear a pianist who at 16 won Liszt Budapest,17 Geneva,and at 18 Rubinstein ……playing Chopin Studies op 25 which will complete his survey of the Chopin Studies op 10 and 25 in Poland all within a month!!!!

Kevin Chen A gentle giant of humility and genius

Benjamin Grosvenor at the Proms The reincarnation of the Golden Age of piano playing

Pure genius and I feel as the public in Moscow must have done when another Canadian Glenn Gould made his debut to an empty hall …..word spread like wildfire that there was a genius in Moscow and the hall famously was full after the interval .Kevin Chen just played a Liszt Sonata that will go down in history ….now for Chopin op 52 and op 25 ………A genius is in our midst ……..

Offering this time the studies op 25 and the Liszt Sonata at only 18 he demonstrated himself to be a consummate artist of extraordinary professionalism and refined preparation.
I say it once again he is for me the reincarnation of Solomon ………….and barely 18 years old ….unbelievable but listen for yourself !

Sokolov,Volodos and now Chen joins them ……..a Sacred trinity…………..Chopin studies of unbelievable beauty and mastery.Musical values above all else where Chopin’s most poetic studies were turned into tone poems of exquisite and overpowering beauty.Their technical difficulties became irrelevant as the music was allowed to flow from his hands with a fluidity and mastery of great poetic poignancy.Substituting at the last minute for an indisposed Benjamin Grosvenor with a different programme from that in Duszniki just two weeks ago.

Kevin Chen A gentle giant of humility and genius

Ferenc Liszt

Années de pèlerinage, Second year,Sonetto 104 del Petrarca, S. 161 no. 5

Sonata in B minor, S. 178

Fryderyk Chopin

Ballade in F minor, op. 52

12 Etudes, op. 25

https://youtube.com/live/oprmW3Myqv8?feature=share

Listening to Kevin Chen again the word genius comes to mind but what does it actually mean.Why should a child suddenly at an early age become so aware of musical sounds.It can happen and probably often does but may be ignored and just considered a childish infatuation.I remember a very fine Chinese/Scottish pianist Yuanfan Yang whose mother had told me of the extraordinary tale of her six year old son at a birthday party sitting down at the piano in his friends house and improvising.His friends mother asked her who his teacher was as she too would like her son be able to play like that.But we do not have a piano and she had no idea that he had this gift.His parents took him to a specialist music school in Manchester and the rest is history.These super sensitive children may be lucky enough to receive an early training from someone who can nurture and encourage this early awakening of acute sensibility to sound without destroying it or trying to conventionalise it or bring it into line with what is considered the norm.Kevin Chen is obviously a case in point.His teacher was one of the most remarkable Canadian pianists of her generation Marilyn Engle https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/marilyn-engle-emc

Her colleague Linn Hendry /Rothstein writes :”Canada is a very big country and we all knew each other from the radio…..Marilyn’s teacher in Calgary was very well known for producing solid piano skills…Gladys Egbert…I met Marilyn in Switzerland,by chance, we were having dinner with Tibor Varga and she was in the same restaurant with Peter Feuchtwanger !!! https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2016/07/02/peter-feuchtwanger/

She won CBC talent festival in 1966 and I think Janina (Fialkowska) did it in 1968 or 69.I came 2nd to William Tritt in 70 (he played Prokofiev 2 and I played Brahms 1) then the next year I played Rach 3 and got the top prize….I think in between Jane Coop was a winner and after me was Angela Hewitt as I remember. In those days there were quite a few CBC radio orchestras;one in each province so you could be pretty busy. I was always in awe of Marilyn’s bravery in travelling away from home to study. She did go back to Calgary though quite early which may have been for family reasons…and a career in music for a woman was not an easy ride.Janina was taken under the wing of Rubinstein when she was at a crossroads in her life.Angela Hewitt was offered a recording contract for all the works of Bach with the then almost unknown Hyperion label.Marilyn has obviously become a magnificent teacher which the world has discovered via Kevin Chen.

The only real contact between all of us was the CBC…We all knew each other from the radio though…personally I was given a ridiculous number of recital and concerto recording opportunities because of the CBC competition.

I just hope he can make a happy life..he has certainly brought cheer to my life with those 2 recitals…absolutely renews hope in the future if piano playing …the boy has integrity and true and deep respect for the composer…for once a young player who does not put himself forward as the most important part of the equation……he does not need a teacher now just support” Linn Hendry/Rothstein

It is wonderful to see with what generosity both Janina Fialkowska,Angela Hewitt and Louis Lortie are supporting and helping their younger colleagues as they face the trials and tribulations of a concert career.

There is a Canadian school of piano playing which is rarely mentioned of which Kevin Chen and Bruce Liu are the most recent two who are demonstrating to the world the Canadian school’s qualities of integrity,honesty,artistry and mastery that are filling the major concert halls world wide

Sidney Harrison,my first piano teacher was often to be seen judging these competitions and was infact the first man to give piano lesson on television.The TV was a big box that eventually replaced the piano in most living rooms and had a magnifying glass that would allow one to look in to programmes on the one and only channel for a few hours each day!I remember him telling me that a teacher had told him about a boy who played to him who had spent several hours just playing a single chord searching for inner sounds.Glenn Gould went on to astonish us all with those very sounds.

Liszt noted on the sonata’s manuscript that it was completed on 2 February 1853,but he had composed an earlier version by 1849.The Sonata was dedicated to Robert Schumann in return for Schumann’s dedication of his Fantasie in C op 17 (published 1839) to Liszt.A copy of the work arrived at Schumann’s house in May 1854, after he had entered Endenich sanatorium. Pianist and composer Clara Schumann did not perform the Sonata despite her marriage to Robert Schumann as she found it “merely a blind noise”.The original loud ending crossed out by Liszt and replaced with the visionary afterthought of a Genius.

The Liszt Sonata and the Chopin fourth Ballade are together with the Schumann Fantasie pinnacles of the Romantic piano repertoire .The Chopin studies were the discovery by a genius of the poetic and technical possibilities of a piano with pedals.So it was fascinating to hear in Poland in such a short space of time two performances of the Liszt sonata,the Chopin Ballade and the Etudes op 25.Magnificent performances from great young artists that Piotr Paleczny brings to Chopin’s homeland every summer.It was though by an unhappy coincidence that we were offered a surprise recital by Kevin Chen with three of these major works in the same improvised programme!Lukas Geniusas had played Chopin op 25 https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/08/11/lukas-geniusas-maturity-and-mastery-in-duszniki/ and Illia Ovcharenko the Liszt Sonata https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/08/10/illia-ovcharenko-in-duszniki-a-great-artist-with-a-heart-of-gold/

No comparison could or should be made as each performance stood on its own magnificent ground and communicated the essence of the music with great artistry.Comparative performances and hence the Circus Arena of the competition circuit are not for me but a necessary evil to give a platform and voice to the prodigious amount of talent that the world has never seen the like of before.

Kevin gave us poetry from the very first exclamatory notes of Liszt’s Sonettò 104 del Petrarca :’Pace non trovo,e non ho da far Guerra…….volo sopra ‘l cielo …e tutto il mondo abbraccio’ Indeed we were embraced by rich sumptuous sounds of a grandiloquence and a timeless unwinding of melodic lines .Embellishments opening like a flower over the entire keyboard only to dissolve into melodic outpourings of ravishing beauty.The atmosphere created by this young artist was so overpowering and with an ending of breathtaking beauty and poignancy that one could feel the electric atmosphere even thousands of miles away on screen.

It was on this electric silence that Kevin intoned the heartbeat of G that opens the monumental Sonata in B minor.A performance which had won Kevin at only 14 first prize in the hall of the Liszt Academy in Budapest and that had so astonished the world as a complete outsider took the public and jury by storm.What can one say of a performance of such intelligence,humility and mastery.The composers indications were the starting point for a performance of architectural shape,aristocratic nobility and poetry.I cannot remember being more moved as the final wondrous chords reached into the distance with breathtaking sensitivity after having shared with us a whole world of blood,thunder,sumptuous beauty and poetic delicacy without ever loosing the overall genial shape that Liszt had created.It was clear for the first time the seeds of absolute genius that were to lead to Liszt’s ever more searing search into the future.

Substituting his youthful showmanship,pop star image and adulation for something much deeper and intense that would be the guiding light for future generations.Kevin too as Linn Rothstein so rightly pointed out said :”the boy has integrity and a true deep respect for the composer”……..what a lesson when I had re read this article recently about a pianist whose performance in Edinburgh Festival so shocked a colleague this week with his completely different point of view of the interpreters role!:https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2022/07/25/mikhail-pletnev-in-verbier-fakefool-or-genius/

There was absolute clarity but also subtle shading as the three opening seeds of this work are placed before us with such respect for the. composer’s very precise indications.The real opening of the sonata on the third page taking us by surprise as Kevin has a truly virtuoso technique when he chooses to go into top gear.The subtle beauty of the ‘Margherita’ theme was played with disarming simplicity and poignant meaning as embellishments just opened like flowers blossoming with ever more radiance.There was also a rhythmic drive of breathtaking brilliance and beauty as every detail was noted and incorporated into an interpretation of innovative discovery and wonder.A nobility and aristocratic declamations that I have never heard played with such overpowering power and conviction.There was remarkable control of the right hand finger legato that allowed the menacing left hand to pronounce it devilry with terrifying vehemence with not a cloud in sight.

There was a religious solemnity and eloquence to the Andante Sostenuto as it led to the Quasi Adagio of deep meditation and purity.Deeply felt utterances but never allowing the tempo to slacken or break the great architectural arch under which all was being conceived.A sense of colour that became a true kaleidoscope of emotions.The Allegro energico fugato was indeed played in two to terrifying effect as the temperature rose to boiling point bursting over as the recapitulation at last took over.Streaks of lightening shot across the keys with amazing intensity and control and led to the incredible virtuosity of the famous octaves. I have never heard them so clear or precise as today from artists that have included in live performance Richter,Gilels,Arrau and many other great musicians of our age .With Kevin we were not even aware of them ,such was their supreme musical significance.The final visionary pages were played with the weight and poignancy that made Ashkenazy declare that in his opinion they were the most remarkable pages in all the piano repertoire.Today we heard from this 18 year old artist a performance that has put this master work on the very Pinnacle on which it was conceived!

Kevin had played the Fourth Ballade in Duszniki and together with the two encores by Schumann / Liszt were the only works that he repeated in this surprise recital despite and arduous travel schedule in between!The Ballade demonstrated even more clearly his sense of line that together with masterly control could make this work seem like a wave with an inevitability of all that got caught up in it.Moments of purity and sublime beauty and occasional moments to look and stare but always with a sense that we were moving towards a climax of sumptuous passion and beauty that was the culmination of the experience we were being offered.A quite remarkable maturity for a young man of such passionate conviction and technical mastery.The two Schumann song transcriptions were played even more beautifully than in Duszniki because Kevin is a real artist who has need of an audience to stimulate and inspire him each time to even greater heights of discovery.

Chopin Studies op 25 where Art conceals Art in a display of disarming simplicity and technical mastery that I doubt could be matched by others in live performance.Lukas Genusias had given a wonderful account but it was his Rachmaninov that took our breath away.Kevin,on the other hand ,from the very first notes showed us the beauty of the celestial harp with refined phrasing and melting sounds .The second was a will o’ the wisp of delicacy with rays of glistening sounds shimmering so effortlessly over the keys. There was a burning drive to the third but with a musical line that was shaped with remarkable control .In the fourth the legato and non legato added shape to the overall musical line never conceding anything to the driving forward pace he had chosen.The fifth was memorable,like with Rubinstein,for the noble beauty of the central episode.The sixth in double thirds Kevin had already astonished us with when he played it as an encore in Duszniki.It was even more unbelievable now for its technical command and speed all under fairy lighting of jeux perlé brilliance.There was a deeply moving interlude with the long drawn out duet between voices in the seventh played with searing passionate intensity.The sixths of the eighth were played with superhuman legato before the fleeting lightness of the ‘Butterfly’ Etude.The final three studies were played with incredible power and conviction that was truly breathtaking.Unbelievable power and authority but also beauty and delicacy of the octaves in the tenth.A Winter Wind that literally blew itself out at the top of the keyboard opening a flood gate for oceanic waves of tidal passion with a final Titanic wave that swept all before it.