Concert review: Thoughtful Jonathan Biss and brilliant Pierre-Laurent Aimard made piano festival memorable

Singapore International Piano Festival 2023 – Jonathan Biss, Pierre-Laurent Aimard

Victoria Concert Hall
Last Saturday, 7.30pm, and Sunday, 7.30pm

Beyond offering a string of piano stars in recital, the Singapore International Piano Festival (SIPF) treats listeners through inventiveness and thoughtful programming. Such was the case of the last two recitals of the 2023 festival.

Anyone listening to American pianist Jonathan Biss’ intensively sensitive interpretations of familiar works in the first of the recitals might well have been taken aback by the dusky tonality and sorrowful undertones.

His brilliant programme notes shed light on his thinking behind the programme, and his approach in performance. The works that he chose by Schubert, Schumann, Mozart and Beethoven were all composed close to the end of each composer’s life. References to profundity, bleakness, vulnerability, solitude and hopelessness were never far away, and his playing was totally in keeping with his programme.

Biss’ touch created a unique warmth and roundedness that were present throughout the evening. He presented a huge expressive palette, but contemplativeness was always around the corner. The Schubert Impromptus, D.935 was immediately captivating in its sensitivity, intense but without excess.

Schumann’s Ghost Variations was composed over 11 days, two years before his death. The day before he completed it, he threw himself into the Rhine River. Days after, he was admitted to an asylum. The piece was his final work. It requires the performer to fathom Schumann’s tormented genius, and Biss shared an exceptionally profound reading.

Mozart’s Rondo, K.511 opened the second half. There is a bleakness in the Rondo not seen in his other solo works. Yet Biss went further, perhaps to excessive depths. The selections from Jatekok (Games) by Hungarian composer Gyorgy Kurtag that followed are short works from his middle period. Their link to the evening’s theme (composer’s late works) was that many of them are dedicated to composers of the past.

Beethoven’s penultimate piano sonata, his Sonata No. 31, was the highlight of the second half. This is where Biss brought everything to the keyboard, right up to the towering fugue, where desolation makes way to exultation.

French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard is the leading exponent of Romanian avant-garde composer Gyorgy Sandor Ligeti’s piano music. He also gained a strong following for his Beethoven concerto set with late Austrian conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. That a concert bookended by the music of Ligeti was so well patronised was impressive, showing how the festival has grown a knowledgeable audience base with Catholic tastes.

The opening half of Ligeti’s Musica Ricercata, 11 minimalist works, interleaved with 10 Bagatelles from Beethoven’s Op.33 and Op.119 Bagatelles, was supremely thought-provoking and not without risk of rejection by the audience. Aimard’s exceptional musicality and piercing focus made the set a delight, even for the Ligeti novice.

The crystalline clarity and razor-sharp articulation Aimard lent Musica Ricercata were not at all out of place on the Bagatelles, which the pianist interprets as equally avant-garde for Beethoven’s time.

As in the first half, the second half was played as a continuous set of three Etudes each by Debussy and Chopin, followed by six by Ligeti. The contrasts in touch, tone and pedalling achieved by Aimard left the audience breathless. The extreme demands of the pieces that, at their most banal, are technique exercises, was made irrelevant by Aimard’s virtuosity, and what was heard was wonderful music.

This review would be incomplete without mention of the superlative skills of the festival’s piano tuner Walter Haass. These two contrasting evenings could not have fully succeeded without hours of adjusting the Steinway to each player’s exacting needs.

The sheer imagination and musicianship of Biss and Aimard have made SIPF 2023 truly memorable.