Lunar New Year at the National Liberal Club in an evening of sumptuous delight organised every year by Yisha Xue for her Asia Circle.Curtis invited for the first five days of Snake Year.

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Dragon ,drums and many other delights to celebrate the opening of this New Year.The year of the Snake.

A culinary feast for over 100 distinguished guests but it was the twenty year old Taiwanese pianist Curtis Phill Hsu who stole the show with playing of such exquisite artistry that silenced an audience ready for revelry. We were stopped in our tracks in one of those collective moments when time stands still.

The winner of the Hastings International Piano Competition cast a spell over the festive atmosphere and illuminated our evening with the perfumed delights of Debussy but above all the timeless beauty he brought to Schubert’s G flat Impromptu.

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A sumptuous improvised paraphrase of a popular chinese film score was played with the ease and kaleidoscope of colours from a young man whose destiny is already sicured.

After the sumptuous Chinese New Year Celebrations at the NLC, Yisha together with Ian Brignall and Paul Newman, who had both travelled up especially from Hastings, having organised for the 2023 Hastings winner two extra concerts in Chelsea at the Sketch Club and finally on Sunday at the Arts Club.

Curtis Phill Hsu mastery and artistry of the 19 year old winner of Hastings International Piano 2024
https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2024/10/01/curtis-phill-hsu-mastery-and-artistry-of-the-19-year-old-winner-of-hastings-international-piano-2024/

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This little tour had in fact commenced with a full recital in Bob Boas sumptuous salon, neighbour of the Wigmore and Bechstein Halls,and had concluded after the NLC and Sketch Club with a Sunday evening concert at Chelsea Arts Club.

I never knew of the existence of the Sketch Club even though I have visited friends on many occasions who live almost next door on Cheyne Walk overlooking the historic Physic Garden. It is a journey back in time which quite frequently happens in the ‘Circoli’ that one can still occasionally find in noble old Italian cities, but I had no idea could be found in the centre of London! Mozart of course talks about going for a ride in the countryside of Chelsea but that is almost three centuries ago.

An amazing place full of the atmosphere of Artists from past times who came together to discuss, create and smoke! Similar of course to Montmartre at the turn of the 1900’s as described by Picasso,Stravinsky,Poulenc and Rubinstein.

A noble Blüthner sits in the vast studio,with painters’ easles stained with paint stacked in the corner, because it is a club still vibrant with activity. It was here that Paul Newman had organised a second full recital for Curtis of Debussy,Beethoven,Ravel and Schubert with a surprise item by Benjamin Britten. It was here that we could rediscover the true mastery of this young musician.

Opening with three Debussy Preludes from Book 1. ‘La file aux cheveaux de Lin’ was played with aristocratic weight, freedom and ravishing beauty.’Très calme et doucement expressif ‘ could not have found more sensitive hands as they carved out this well ‘trodden’ melody without a trace of sentimentality but with a poignant significance of poetic understanding.The final bars marked ‘murmuré et en revenant peu à peu’ was where Curtis brought out the inner parts that led so naturally upwards drifting into the distance before the two crystalline split notes of farewell. There was magic in the air in a place where the bohemian Debussy would have felt completely at home.The distance bells of ‘Les collines d’Anacapri’ were answered by the gradual awakening of the joyous excitement of the Neapolitan Riviera. Curtis created a wonderful sense of improvisation with chameleonic changes of colour and character as the melody was heard in the bass ‘avec la liberté d’une chanson populaire’. A passionate outpouring of subtle innuendo of sultry insinuation, was played with all the style of a jazz player before the return to the hustle and bustle of the mediterranean and the final ecstatic cry for joy that Curtis punched out with such gleeful exuberance.

The final prelude in this ‘tris’ was the most innovative and remarkable. Debussy was quite a considerable pianist and knew the scores of past masters well ,he even edited the works of Chopin. But it was here the three handed pianism of Thalberg and Liszt that created an ongoing wave of sound on which floated the glowing melodic line. Curtis played with the same mastery that I remember from Richter on his first visits to the West. Streams of notes played with such mastery that they become merely gold and silver sounds as the sails are allowed to float so naturally around the keyboard. A tour de force especially on a piano that was most probably the original one from the 1890’s when this club was first formulated! Richter ,too, used to enjoy his encounter with unknown instruments and the challenge of delving deep to find a soul that may have been hidden from all, until its master can tame them.

I have hear Curtis play Beethoven before, both the ‘Waldstein’ and ‘Hammerklavier’ revealed an artist with the same sacred fire of a Serkin.The same intellectual intelligence of all great interpreters searching deep into the score to discover what the composer really intended.

I have reviewed the ‘Waldstein’ before as you can read here :

Curtis Phill Hsu ‘Genius bestrides St Mary’s Perivale’
https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2024/11/27/curtis-phill-hsu-genius-bestrides-st-marys-perivale/

But every performance for a real thinking musician is a new voyage of discovery and it was this that came across with the dynamic rhythmic drive and inner energy that opened the ‘Waldstein’. Delius used to dismiss all other composers except himself with just a few words.Bach he would describe as ‘knotty twine’ whereas Beethoven was ‘all scales and arpeggios!’ It is this sonata and the ‘Emperor’ concerto that does in fact use scales and arpeggios in a truly genial way.

Curtis played with absolute rhythmic precision, even taking the tempo of the Allegro con brio from the tempo needed for the melodic second subject. A driving rhythmic impulse that did not turn corners in a ‘stylish’ way but realised that the abrupt changes of character were more tonal than slowing the tempo. Curtis with fingers like limpets that could play with Gilels and Gelber like precision, where every note was given its just weight and worth.The sudden changes from piano to sforzando in the development were as hair raising as they must truly have seemed in Beethoven’s day. An introduction to the last movement ( the slow movement Beethoven obviously considered too distracting for this whirlwind he had created and was later published as the Andante favori ).

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Curtis brought a weight and profound beauty to this deeply meditative outpouring with an architectural sense of line that led to the top G, that Beethoven, as if by magic, turns into the opening of the Rondo. An undulation of sounds as the composer has indicated, with very precise pedal markings, and which Curtis scrupulously interpreted. A tour de force of scales and arpeggios indeed, but what drive and architectural shape this young man, with great maturity, could lead us through a maze of breathtaking virtuosity.

‘Gaspard de la Nuit’ was written by Ravel with the intent of creating a piano piece of even more transcendental difficulty than Balakirev’s ‘Islamey’. ‘Scarbo’ is indeed one of the most difficult pieces in the piano repertoire and needs a virtuoso technique, but also a resilience that can keep the driving rhythms of the impish demon flitting around the keyboard with unrelenting skill. It also has moments of passionate outpourings that Curtis played with fiery conviction. Holding back with aristocratic authority before letting go with extraordinary vehemence.The deep bass gongs at the beginning of the mysterious central episode I have never heard played with such clarity or demonic devilry. Curtis not only was master of the notes but above all master of the character and subtle dynamic range that Ravel demands.

The opening ‘Ondine’ was played with extraordinary clarity on a piano that I doubt has ever been asked to respond to such mastery. The nymph sang out above the washes of sound and the lead up to the climax was breathtaking in its exhilarating ecstatic declamation. Wonderful control on a not easy piano as Curtis left the pedal down for the final whispered cry of the nymph before allowing her to flit off into the distance. ‘Le Gibet’ (the gallows swaying in the wind) showed the true mastery of Curtis because the truly great pianists are not those that can play louder and faster than their rivals but those that can play quieter and with total control. And nowhere more could one appreciate Curtis’s great artistry than in the much maligned G flat Impromptu of Schubert with which he closed his recital . I wonder if Curtis knew that today the 31st January was Schubert’s birthday in 1797.There was indeed magic in the air and a sense of timeless beauty as Curtis stretched the melodic line with the rarified breath control of the greatest of Bel Canto singers.

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And it was to the human voice that Curtis turned as he accompanied our host Paul Newman in a delicious rendering of Britten’s ‘Foggy Foggy Dew’.They had tried it out for fun in the afternoon with no idea of sharing it publicly, but Curtis was only too delighted to finish his recital together with such a genial host.

Ryan Wang ‘A star is born on the Wings of the Dragon’ at the National Liberal Club
https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2024/02/10/ryan-wang-a-star-is-born-on-the-wings-of-the-dragon-at-the-national-liberal-club/

The Year of the Tiger with Love Concert Yuanfan Yang and Shirley Wu at the NLC
https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2022/02/17/the-year-of-the-tiger-with-love-concert-yuanfan-yang-and-shirley-wu-at-the-nlc/